• GCC Exception Frames

    When an exception is thrown in C++ and caught by one of the calling functions, the supporting libraries need to unwind the stack. With gcc this is done using a variant of DWARF debugging information. The unwind information is loaded at runtime, but is not read unless an exception is thrown. That means that the…

  • Concurrent linking

    There is still work to do on gold. But once that is done, what is the next big step? In the long term we need an incremental linker, but I’m also interested in an idea which I call concurrent linking. A concurrent linker runs at the same time as the compiler. As each object file…

  • Gold Released

    I have finally released gold, the new ELF linker I’ve been working on, to the free software world. It is now part of the GNU binutils. I sent an announcement to the binutils mailing list.

  • Latchkey Children

    I recently heard, purely anecdotally, about a case where a neighbor called Child Protective Services when a ten-year old boy came home and his mother wasn’t there. His mother was out shopping or something, and had given him a key. I don’t know if this really happened or not, but it seems like an extraordinary…

  • Walking Robot

    I was very impressed by this walking robot (that link is to a video on YouTube). Watching it gave me a very strong feeling of “the future is now.” No doubt there are many hurdles to overcome, but it sure seems like we could all have a walking robot pack horse in ten years (well,…