hi all,
is it possible for ELF executable to be run without
shared libraries which is linked at compile time but
not needed at run time?
for example, there is an ELF executable called foo,
and foo needs libbar.so for function bar().
my understanding is that kernel will load libbar.so
into memory when foo calls function bar. if foo doesn't
call function bar, libbar.so is not loaded at all.
then why does libbar.so have to exist when foo is executed?
is it just a limitation of ELF? i think even under the ms-windows,
linked(?) dll doesn't have to exist if a binary doesn't call it.
--
yashi
ps. pointers to books, web, whatever is also appreciated
