Link time

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Link time" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

In

).

It is common to speak of link time operations (the operations performed by a linker) or link time requirements (programming language requirements that must be met by compiled source code for it to be successfully linked).

Link time operations

The operations performed at link time usually include fixing up the addresses of externally referenced objects and functions, various kinds of cross module checks (e.g.

delay code generation until link time because it is here that information about a complete program is available to them. Resolving external variables in a program is also done at link time.

The

(LTO), when enabled, occurs at link time.

Link time requirements

The definition of a programming language may specify link time requirements that source code must meet to be successfully compiled (e.g. the maximum number of characters in an externally visible identifier that must be considered significant).

Exceptions

In some

] it may be necessary for some compilation and linking to occur at runtime.

See also

• Program lifecycle phase
• Compile time
• Runtime (program lifecycle phase)

References