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How OS X Executes Applications

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the learning-more-about-it dept.

MacHore writes "0xFE has an excellent tutorial on Mach-O, which is the file format used by OS X executable files and libraries. It goes into great detail about how Mach-O works, and explains what OS X actually does when it loads and runs an application. Subtopics include Universal Binaries, The Dynamic Linker, Using otool, and other goodies."

3 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. boo! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Screw showing how OS X launches applications, I want to see the inner workings of Steve Jobs' pancreas

  2. Oh this can't be good by 1336.5 · · Score: 0, Troll

    0xFE has an excellent tutorial on Mach-O, which is the file format used by OS X executable files and libraries. It goes into great detail about how Mach-O works, and explains what OS X actually does when it loads and runs an application. Subtopics include Universal Binaries, The Dynamic Linker, Using otool, and other goodies.

    GREAT! Lets tell every wanna-be 1337 h4x0r how to screw with excecutables in OS X only to clog messageboards for help when they screw it up.

    On the other hand I guess it does ensure job security for those of us WITH brains.

  3. Re:Obligitory... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Absolutely. I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a Mac (an 800MHz iBook with 640 Megs RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running Ubuntu, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.