Developing and Porting C and C++ Applications on AIX

2.9. Shared libraries in a development environment

When an application is started, the system loader reads the loader section of the header of the executable file. It reads the dependency information for any shared objects the executable requires and attempts to load the code for those shared objects into the system shared library segment if they are not already loaded. Shared objects that are loaded into the system shared library segment have an attribute called the use count. Each time an application program that uses the shared object is started, the use count is incremented. When an application terminates, the use count for any shared objects it was using is decreased by one. When the use count for a shared object in the system shared library ...