Executable Format

External

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_executable_file_formats

Internal

• Multi-Architecture Container Images

Overview

An executable file (or program) is a file that contains instructions, or machine code, directly executable by the CPU. The alternative is a file that contains higher level instructions or code to be interpreted by an interpreter. The executable files are usually created by assembling object files, which are created by compiling a higher level language.

Linux operating systems use Executable and Linkable Format (ELF).

MacOS uses Mach-O.

One can tell the format by executing the file command on the executable file.

On Linux:

On Mac:

file yunikorn-scheduler
yunikorn-scheduler: Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

The format of the machine code stored in an executable file depends on the machine architecture.