Prebinding is a method for optimizing Mach-O executables. For example, this is what Mac OS X is doing when in the "Optimizing" stage of installing system software or certain applications.

It is a process that essentially boils down to looking up memory offsets of symbols in libraries that the program is using before the program is launched, and storing this information ahead-of-time, so that it does not have to be done repeatedly on each launch of the application.

See detailed explanation here: http://radio.weblogs.com/0100490/stories/2002/08/24/prebindingExplained.html

See also

• Library (computer science)
• Linker
• Loader (computing)
• Object File
• Relocation
• Static Library

Computer library