“C++ in Elvenland”
summary
Walks a compiled C++ binary from ELF header through sections and symbols, and shows live demos with objdump and readelf and using objcopy embedding to pack data into object files. Explains concrete surprises: const globals can be optimized away, inline implies weak linkage which avoids multiple-definition errors, relocations act as runtime patches, LTO passes LLVM bitcode in sections, the BuildID and eh_frame is ubiquitous even for plain C, and how strip/remove-section flags change size but can break execution.
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chapters (14)
- 0:00Welcome and introduction
- 10:50Embedding data in ELF
- 13:22Sections vs segments
- 17:01C++ symbol mangling
- 22:51Weak symbols and inline
- 33:43Link time optimization
- 35:11Debug sections and DWARF
- 36:42Exception handling
- 40:46RTTI and virtual tables
- 41:11Relocations and binary patching
- 42:43Static initialization
- 44:31GNU stack and protections
- 45:15Shrinking binaries
- 55:55Q&A session
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