6.1   Synopsys

bold [options] objfile...

6.2   Description

Bold combines a number of object files, relocate their data and resolves their symbols references, in order to generate executable binaries.

Bold has only one, very specific purpose: making small executables.

6.3   Options

--version	Show program's version and exit.
-h, --help	Show help message and exit.
-e SYMBOL, --entry=SYMBOL
	Use SYMBOL as the explicit symbol for beginning execution of your program. If --raw is specified, it defaults to _start.
-l LIBNAME, --library=LIBNAME
	Link against the shared library specified by LIBNAME. Bold relies on python's ctypes module to find the libraries. This option may be used any number of times.
-L DIRECTORY, --library-path=DIRECTORY
	This option does nothing, and is present ony for compatibility reasons. It MAY get implemented in the future, though. This option may be used any number of times.
-o FILE, --output=FILE
	Set the output file name (default value is a.out).
--raw	Don't include the builtin external symbols resolution code. This is described in details further in this document.
-c, --ccall	Make external symbols directly callable by C, without having to declare the pointers on functions. This option adds 6 bytes for each externally defined function. This is described in details further in this document.
-a, --align	Align the wrappers for external symbols on an 8 byte boundary, to take advantage of the RIP-relative addressing. This is described in details further in this document.

6.4   Notes

The LD_PRELOAD environment variable may not always work (as expected or at all).

The main() function is called without any argument. Its return code is used as exit code, though.

7.1   External symbols resolution

The "import by hash" method is from parapete, leblane, las, as described on http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=5392

7.2   Calling from C

If you write your code in C and need to call the external symbols, you basically have two options. The first one is to redefine them (or define new ones) to call by pointers. For instance,

int SDL_Init(int);

would become:

int (*SDL_Init)(int);

Repeat it for all functions, or write a tool to automate it (hint: look at http://research.mercury-labs.org/ibh-i386-0.2.2.tar.gz for help).

There's a second possibility however, and it's the one used by Bold when you specify the --ccall option: make the resolved symbol point, not to the address of the function, but to a JMP instruction to the actual address:

global SDL_Init

.text

SDL_Init:          jmp [rel _bold__SDL_Init]
SDL_SetVideoMode:  jmp [rel _bold__SDL_SetVideoMode]

.bss

_bold__SDL_Init          resq        ; Filled by the import by hash code
_bold__SDL_SetVideoMode  resq

This approach takes 6 bytes (the JMP instruction) for each external function used.

7.3   Aligning

The x86_64 architecture has this nice thing called "RIP-relative addressing". If all the JMP instructions are in the same order than the pointers to the functions they refer to, having them aligned with the pointers would result in identical instructions. This is done with the --align option.

Adding two null bytes between each JMP enlarges the final executable by 2 x (number of function - 1) bytes, and may seem to go against our goal. However, the result is a repetition of the same eight bytes, something that can improve compression a lot!

7.4   Additional Trick 1: DT_DEBUG

Bold declares a global symbol named _dt_debug, that points to the value of the DT_DEBUG entry of the DYNAMIC table, for easy access. Just in case, the DYNAMIC table can also be reached using the global _DYNAMIC symbol.

7.5   Additional Trick 2: Short DYNAMIC table

Executables generated by ld usually have a lot of entries in their DYNAMIC table. Bold puts only the strict necessary:

• One DT_NEEDED entry for each shared library to load (obviously).
• A DT_SYMTAB entry, with null-pointer. Without this one, the interpreter wouldn't do its job.
• a DT_DEBUG entry, that will be used for symbol resolution.

And that's it!