Dynamic linking in Linux and Windows - Part One

This article discusses the shared libraries concept in both Windows and Linux, and offers a walk-through through various data structures to explain how dynamic linking is done in these operating systems. The paper will be useful for developers interested in the security implications and the relative speed of dynamic linking, and assumes some prior cursory knowledge with dynamic linking.

Part one introduces the concepts for both Linux and Windows, but will focus primarily on Linux. Next time in part two, we'll discuss how it works in Windows and then continue to compare the two environments.