The IDA Pro Book, 2nd Edition

Alternative Loader Strategies

If you spend some time browsing the example loaders included with the SDK, you will find several different styles of loaders. One loader worth pointing out is the Java loader (<SDKDIR>/ldr/javaldr). For some file formats, the coupling between the loader and the processor module is very loose. Once the loader makes note of entry points into the code, the processor module needs no additional information in order to properly disassemble the code. Some processor modules may require substantially more information about the original input file and may be required to perform much of the same parsing that was previously completed by the loader. In order to avoid such duplication of effort, a loader and a processor may be ...