Getting the Basics of Linking Right
Let's learn about how and when to link files in CMake.
We'll cover the following...
The life cycle of a C++ program consists of five main stages: writing, compiling, linking, loading, and execution. After correctly compiling all the sources, we need to put them together into an executable.
Structure of an object file
Object files produced in a compilation can't be executed by a processor directly. But why? To answer this, let's take a look at how a compiler structures an object file in the popular ELF format (used by Unix-like systems and many others):
The compiler will prepare an object file for every translation unit (for every .cpp file). These files will be used to build an in-memory image of our program. Object files contain the following elements:
An ELF header identifying the target operating system, ELF file type, target instruction set architecture, and information on the position and size of two header tables found in ELF files: the program headers table (not present in object files) and the section headers table.
Sections containing information grouped by type (described next).
A section headers table containing information ...