5: Tool Chain
- Page ID
- 19889
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In general, the set of programming tools used to create a program is referred to as the tool chain(For more information, refer to: http://en.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Toolchain). For the purposes of this text, the tool chain consists of the following;
- Assembler
- Linker
- Loader
- Debugger
While there are many options for the tool chain, this text uses a fairly standard set of open source tools that work well together and fully support the x86 64-bit environment.
Each of these programming tools is explained in the following sections.
- 5.2: Assembler
- The assembler is a program that will read an assembly language input file and convert the code into a machine language binary file. The input file is an assembly language source file containing assembly language instructions in human readable form. The machine language output is referred to as an object file. As part of this process, the comments are removed, and the variable names and labels are converted into appropriate addresses.
- 5.3: Linker
- The linker, sometimes referred to as linkage editor, will combine one or more object files into a single executable file. Additionally, any routines from user or system libraries are included as necessary.
- 5.4: Assemble/Link Script
- When programming, it is often necessary to type the assemble and link commands many times with various different programs. Instead of typing the assemble (yasm) and link (ld) commands each time, it is possible to place them in a file, called a script file. Then, the script file can be executed which will just execute the commands that were entered in the file. While not required, using a script file can save time and make things easier when working on a program.
- 5.5: Loader
- The loader is a part of the operating system that will load the program from secondary storage into primary storage (i.e., main memory). In broad terms, the loader will attempt to find, and if found, read a properly formatted executable file, create a new process, and load the code into memory and mark the program as ready for execution.
- 5.6: Debugger
- The debugger is used to control execution of a program. This allows for testing and debugging activities to be performed.