GCC 3.1 - even slower compilation and relocation

[Stephan Maciej]

On Sunday 19 May 2002 23:19, Emond Papegaaij wrote:
> Prelink is the 'true' solution for the relocation problem.  [...]

Well, I have started to learn programming on a Windows platform (I apalogize) 
;-)... From there, I have some basic knowledge about (at least, Microsoft's) 
executeable formats and what linking and relocating means. I do know that 
Windows' and Unix's VMs and default/standard executeable file formats (PE vs. 
ELF) are quite different, but I have no idea of what could be so time-taking 
on doing the final link stages when an executeable gets loaded into memory.

I am aware of the most basic structure of a Microsoft PE executeable (that is 
a Win32 app when being a .EXE). This format is rather simple and quite near 
to what is being in memory when the executeable runs - no time-stealing 
linking before loading. At least, it allows some OS/loader hooks which makes 
exe loading much much faster than everything I've seen with Linux/KDE.

I do appreciate ELF being a portable and quite flexible object format, but 
maybe it has to be considered bad and insuitable due to some circumstances, 
at least some which were already mentioned in this thread. As no alternatives 
are available, we should probably think forward and discuss new ideas. Linux 
gives us the freedom to implement new ideas rather easily, so what would it 
take to create a new "binary format interpreter cut to suit the needs of KDE 
and a bunch of other modern apps"?

Stephan