C8.1 About the Base Platform Application Binary Interface (BPABI)
The Base Platform Application Binary Interface (BPABI) is a meta-standard for third parties to generate their own platform-specific image formats.
Many embedded systems use an operating
system (OS) to manage the resources on a device. In many cases this is a large,
single executable with a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) that
tightly integrates with the applications.
To run an application or use a shared library on a platform OS, you must
conform to the Application Binary Interface (ABI) for the
platform and also the ABI for the Arm® architecture. This can involve substantial changes to the
linker output, for example, a custom file format. To support such a wide variety of
platforms, the ABI for the Arm architecture provides the BPABI.
The BPABI provides a base standard from which a platform ABI can be derived. The linker
produces a BPABI conforming ELF image or shared library. A platform specific tool called a
post-linker translates this ELF output file into a platform-specific file format. Post
linker tools are provided by the platform OS vendor. The following figure shows the BPABI
tool flow.
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