64-bit Software Development on IBM AIX

In this post I'll talk about software development on IBM AIX by means of open source software tools in concert with native AIX development tools.

Using GCC as the compiler to compile your application in AIX is just fine. However, GCC's ld (ld-gcc) linker is not suitable to be used as the linker. This is because linking in AIX is rather tricky and apparently only AIX linker (ld-xlc) work reliably. You can read more about this issue at Using the GNU C/C++ compiler on AIX and AIX Linking and Loading Mechanism.

AIX also has its set of binary utilities (binutils) programs. They are basically the analog of GCC binutils. AIX has native ar archiver, native ld linker (this one is the linker from the AIX xlc compiler suite), and dump utility which is analog to objdump in GCC binutils.

Now, let's see what you need to do to create 64-bit applications in AIX by using the GCC compiler and the native binutils.

• Pass -maix64 parameter to the GCC C compiler to instruct it to emit the correct AIX 64-bit object file that can be handled by the native AIX linker.
• Pass -b64 parameter to the native linker via GCC. You should use GCC's -Wl switch for that. The overall parameter becomes -Wl, -b64. IBM AIX ld command reference explains the parameter in detail.
• Pass -X64 parameter to the native ar archiver to build a 64-bit AIX library. IBM AIX ar command reference explains the parameter in detail.

Once you have build the 64-bit executable or library, you may want to examine it. In Linux or BSD Unix, you would use objdump for that. In AIX, you can use the native dump utility. You need to pass -X64 parameter to dump to instruct it to work in 64-bit mode, i.e. treat the input executable/library as 64-bit binary. For example, the command to show the dependencies of a 64-bit AIX application is: dump -X64 -H.  Refer to the IBM AIX dump command reference for more details.

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