Libraries are loaded into the process address space using the
mmap system call. Conveniently, this happens to be a good
time to update the process symbol table with the library's
incoming symbols so we handle the table update from within the
system call.
This works just like an application's normal symbols. The only
difference between a dynamic library and a main executable is
when the symbol table update occurs. The symbol table update for
an executable happens at program load time and is finished before
the process ever begins executing. Since dynamic linking happens
at runtime, the symbol loading happens after the library is
first loaded into the process address space. The library binary
is examined at this time for a symbol section and that section
is parsed for symbol types with specific bindings (global,
local, weak). Subsequently, these symbols are added to the table
and are available for use by gem5 for things like trace
generation.
Checkpointing should work just as it did previously. The address
space (and therefore the library) will be recorded and the symbol
table will be entirely recorded. (It's not possible to do anything
clever like checkpoint a program and then load the program back
with different libraries with LD_LIBRARY_PATH, because the
library becomes part of the address space after being loaded.)
All the object loaders directly examine the (already completely loaded
by object_file.cc) memory image. There is no current motivation to
keep the fd around.
