Relocation is the process of assigning load addresses for position-dependent code and data of a program and adjusting the code and data to reflect the assigned addresses. Prior to the advent of multiprocess systems, and still in many embedded systems, the addresses for objects were absolute starting at a known location, often zero. Since multiprocessing systems dynamically link and switch between programs it became necessary to be able to relocate objects using position-independent code. A linker usually performs relocation in conjunction with symbol resolution, the process of searching files and libraries to replace symbolic references or names of libraries with actual usable addresses in memory before running a program.

Relocation is typically done by the linker at link time, but it can also be done at load time by a relocating loader, or at run time by the running program itself. Some architectures avoid relocation entirely by deferring address assignment to run time; as, for example, in stack machines with zero address arithmetic or in some segmented architectures where every compilation unit is loaded into a separate segment.