Enabling Symbol Resolution of Private Symbols in Legacy Programs and Optimizing Access to the Private Symbols

摘要

A method for generating a binary executable of a program so that private symbols in a module are accessible from another module. In one embodiment, the method compiles a source program to an intermediate representation and scans the representation to find the private symbols in the program's modules. It then wraps a function around each private symbol. When called, the function returns an address of the private symbol, so that the other module can access the symbol from outside the module in which the symbol is found. At run time, a call is made to obtain the address of the function, which is then executed to obtain the address of the private symbol so that the symbol can be accessed. In another embodiment, a Just-In-Time compiler executes the wrapper functions and patches the executable program with the direct address of the private symbol to avoid a call to the wrapper function.