Demistifying linking: let's implement a static ELF linker together

This workshop is all about linkers, on Linux, in Zig. In 4h you will write a working basic ELF linker in Zig for static x86_64 ELF binaries. We will explore the fundamental building blocks of any linker:

1. What is an (relocatable) object file and how do we parse it? Actually, what do we need to parse in the first instance?
2. What is an input symbol and how do we resolve undefined symbols across multiple input object files?
3. What is the dreaded relocation you have been hearing about all this time?
4. How do we allocate extracted symbols, and fix up those dreaded relocations? What happens if we don’t? Experimentation and segfaults are your best friend when writing a linker, and we will learn how we can use them to quickly narrow down where the mislinking happened.
5. If we have the time, we will attempt linking against static musl libc.
6. If we are doing incredibly well, we will learn how to deal with thread-local storage too which is a prerequisite for handing panics in Zig.

Since this workshop is all about linking ELF binaries targeting Linux, it would be easiest done on an x86_64 Linux laptop. However, writing a linker doesn’t require a Linux host, only a guest to verify that the linked programs actually start up, so a server with access to a Linux instance will be provided.

During this workshop, we will only get to write the more interesting parts of the linker - the boring parts will be prepared in advance. To make the workshop extra useful and interesting, we will purposely experiment with incorrect output a lot to demonstrate how to reason about the failures and mislinking, and use it to actually identify and solve the underlying problem.