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I'd be interested in reading about the history of object file formats in general. I'm wondering what motivates them being so relatively complicated for something that seems so conceptually simple; is it historical baggage or is it essential complexity?

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Linkers and Loaders

I have analyzed a few object file formats in another blog post https://maskray.me/blog/2024-01-14-exploring-object-file-for... (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38998914)

ELF is technically not complicated and simpler than COFF and Mach-O.

Get yourself a copy of “Linkers and Loaders” — https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/519563 . Explains the history of it all.

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