This package contains my shared, dynamic linker (ld.so) and utilities
(ldconfig and ldd) for Linux.  I originally intended this to be
released with the next version of libc.  Unfortunately, the new libc
has been indefinitely delayed.  Since there are a few, large packages
scheduled to be released in the next month that could benefit, I have
decided to release it separately.

For those that were not involved in the development of ld.so, its main
feature is that the user-level, shared library and dynamic linking
support has been moved to its own, special shared library.  This has
two significant advantages.  First, the startup code for all binaries,
which must be linked statically, is reduced by about 2.5k.  Second,
and probably more important, the shared library and dynamic linking
support can be upgraded for all binaries without having to relink by
simply installing a new ld.so.

In addition to ld.so, this package also includes two, related
utilities, ldconfig and ldd.  Ldconfig is used to automatically update
symbolic links to shared libraries.  This should hopefully put an end
to the common problem of accidentally deleting a critical library link
(eg. /lib/libc.so.4).  It's not completely foolproof yet, but is still
a big step forward.  Ldd is used to list the shared libraries
dependencies for a binary.  It is an updated version of my ldd-1.1
which adds support for ld.so and QMAGIC binaries.

Please see the included manual pages for further details.

To install, simply run "make install" as root.  Ready-to-go versions
of all end-products are provided so nothing should need to be compiled
or linked.  If you do need to recompile, you must run "make clean"
first.  To help keep the size of the distributed package as small as
possible, all intermediate files have been replaced with zero-length
files.

Notable contributors to this package include Eric Youngdale, Peter
MacDonald, Hongjiu Lu, Linus Torvalds, Lars Wirzenius and Mitch
D'Souza (not necessarily in that order).

Changes from bersion 1.2a to 1.3:

	Added support for libraries using absolute pathnames.  If I
	had known that the XView libraries used them, I would have
	added this earlier.

	Fixed a bug handling old libraries using a pathname beginning
	with '/' or '/lib/'.

Changes from version 1.2 to 1.2a:

	Fixed a minor bug in ldd which caused all files, specifically
	scripts, to be recognized as binaries.  Thanks to Olaf Flebbe
	for reporting it.

David Engel
david@ods.com
