Locating Shared Object Dependencies

During the link-edit of a dynamic executable, one or more shared objects are explicitly referenced. These objects are recorded as dependencies within the dynamic executable.

The runtime linker first locates this dependency information and uses it to locate and load the associated objects. These dependencies are processed in the same order as they were referenced during the link-edit of the executable.

Once all the dynamic executable's dependencies are loaded, they too are inspected, in the order they are loaded, to locate any additional dependencies. This process continues until all dependencies are located and loaded. This technique results in a breadth-first ordering of all dependencies.