ChorusOS 5.0 Application Developer's Guide

Static and Dynamic Linking

The static linker runs on the development host and the runtime linker (dynamic linker) runs on the target.

The following table summarizes the actions performed by the static linker and by the runtime linker.

Link	Relocatable executable	Dynamic executable
Static Linker	`.a` Static linker adds the required objects (`.o`) of a static library (`.a`) to the executable.	`.a` - Static linker adds the required objects (`.o`) of a static library (`.a`) to the executable. `.so` - Static linker adds the library to the list of libraries to be loaded at actor start-up.
Runtime Linker	n/a	`.so` - At actor start-up, libraries are loaded and linked by the runtime linker. Libraries to be loaded are defined either as static links, or in the `LD_PRELOAD` environment variable. The runtime linker uses a library search path to locate dynamic and shared libraries.
Runtime Linker (`dlopen`)	n/a	`.so` - Application explicitly asks the runtime linker to dynamically load and link a dynamic library using the `dlopen()` function of the dynamic linking API.

Dynamic linking of libraries applies recursively to library dependencies; when a library is loaded, all libraries it uses are also loaded.