Binutils
Binutils
Binutils
November 2017
Roland H. Pesch
Jeffrey M. Osier
Cygnus Support
Cygnus Support
Texinfo 2009-03-28.05
Table of Contents
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1 ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Controlling ar on the Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Controlling ar with a Script . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 ld . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3 nm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4 objcopy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5 objdump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6 ranlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7 size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
8 strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
9 strip . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
10 c++filt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
11 addr2line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
12 nlmconv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
13 windmc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
14 windres. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
15 dlltool . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
15.1 The format of the dlltool ‘.def’ file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
16 readelf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
ii
17 elfedit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
18 Common Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
20 Reporting Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
20.1 Have You Found a Bug? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
20.2 How to Report Bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Binutils Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Introduction 1
Introduction
This brief manual contains documentation for the gnu binary utilities (GNU Tools for Arm
Embedded Processors 7-2017-q4-major) version 2.29.51:
ar Create, modify, and extract from archives
nm List symbols from object files
objcopy Copy and translate object files
objdump Display information from object files
ranlib Generate index to archive contents
readelf Display the contents of ELF format files.
size List file section sizes and total size
strings List printable strings from files
strip Discard symbols
elfedit Update the ELF header of ELF files.
c++filt Demangle encoded C++ symbols (on MS-DOS, this program is named cxxfilt)
addr2line
Convert addresses into file names and line numbers
nlmconv Convert object code into a Netware Loadable Module
windres Manipulate Windows resources
windmc Generator for Windows message resources
dlltool Create the files needed to build and use Dynamic Link Libraries
This document is distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
version 1.3. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documen-
tation License”.
Chapter 1: ar 2
1 ar
ar [-]p [mod ] [‘--plugin’ name ] [‘--target’ bfdname ] [relpos ] [count ] archive [member ...]
ar -M [ <mri-script ]
The gnu ar program creates, modifies, and extracts from archives. An archive is a single
file holding a collection of other files in a structure that makes it possible to retrieve the
original individual files (called members of the archive).
The original files’ contents, mode (permissions), timestamp, owner, and group are pre-
served in the archive, and can be restored on extraction.
gnu ar can maintain archives whose members have names of any length; however, de-
pending on how ar is configured on your system, a limit on member-name length may be
imposed for compatibility with archive formats maintained with other tools. If it exists, the
limit is often 15 characters (typical of formats related to a.out) or 16 characters (typical of
formats related to coff).
ar is considered a binary utility because archives of this sort are most often used as
libraries holding commonly needed subroutines.
ar creates an index to the symbols defined in relocatable object modules in the archive
when you specify the modifier ‘s’. Once created, this index is updated in the archive
whenever ar makes a change to its contents (save for the ‘q’ update operation). An archive
with such an index speeds up linking to the library, and allows routines in the library to
call each other without regard to their placement in the archive.
You may use ‘nm -s’ or ‘nm --print-armap’ to list this index table. If an archive lacks
the table, another form of ar called ranlib can be used to add just the table.
gnu ar can optionally create a thin archive, which contains a symbol index and references
to the original copies of the member files of the archive. This is useful for building libraries
for use within a local build tree, where the relocatable objects are expected to remain
available, and copying the contents of each object would only waste time and space.
An archive can either be thin or it can be normal. It cannot be both at the same time.
Once an archive is created its format cannot be changed without first deleting it and then
creating a new archive in its place.
Thin archives are also flattened, so that adding one thin archive to another thin archive
does not nest it, as would happen with a normal archive. Instead the elements of the first
archive are added individually to the second archive.
The paths to the elements of the archive are stored relative to the archive itself.
gnu ar is designed to be compatible with two different facilities. You can control its
activity using command-line options, like the different varieties of ar on Unix systems; or,
if you specify the single command-line option ‘-M’, you can control it with a script supplied
via standard input, like the MRI “librarian” program.
Chapter 1: ar 3
If one of the files named in member . . . does not exist, ar displays an error
message, and leaves undisturbed any existing members of the archive matching
that name.
By default, new members are added at the end of the file; but you may use one
of the modifiers ‘a’, ‘b’, or ‘i’ to request placement relative to some existing
member.
The modifier ‘v’ used with this operation elicits a line of output for each file
inserted, along with one of the letters ‘a’ or ‘r’ to indicate whether the file was
appended (no old member deleted) or replaced.
‘s’ Add an index to the archive, or update it if it already exists. Note this command
is an exception to the rule that there can only be one command letter, as it is
possible to use it as either a command or a modifier. In either case it does the
same thing.
‘t’ Display a table listing the contents of archive, or those of the files listed in
member . . . that are present in the archive. Normally only the member name
is shown; if you also want to see the modes (permissions), timestamp, owner,
group, and size, you can request that by also specifying the ‘v’ modifier.
If you do not specify a member, all files in the archive are listed.
If there is more than one file with the same name (say, ‘fie’) in an archive (say
‘b.a’), ‘ar t b.a fie’ lists only the first instance; to see them all, you must ask
for a complete listing—in our example, ‘ar t b.a’.
‘x’ Extract members (named member) from the archive. You can use the ‘v’ mod-
ifier with this operation, to request that ar list each name as it extracts it.
If you do not specify a member, all files in the archive are extracted.
Files cannot be extracted from a thin archive.
A number of modifiers (mod) may immediately follow the p keyletter, to specify varia-
tions on an operation’s behavior:
‘a’ Add new files after an existing member of the archive. If you use the modifier
‘a’, the name of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos
argument, before the archive specification.
‘b’ Add new files before an existing member of the archive. If you use the modifier
‘b’, the name of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos
argument, before the archive specification. (same as ‘i’).
‘c’ Create the archive. The specified archive is always created if it did not exist,
when you request an update. But a warning is issued unless you specify in
advance that you expect to create it, by using this modifier.
‘D’ Operate in deterministic mode. When adding files and the archive index use
zero for UIDs, GIDs, timestamps, and use consistent file modes for all files.
When this option is used, if ar is used with identical options and identical input
files, multiple runs will create identical output files regardless of the input files’
owners, groups, file modes, or modification times.
If ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’, then
this mode is on by default. It can be disabled with the ‘U’ modifier, below.
Chapter 1: ar 5
‘f’ Truncate names in the archive. gnu ar will normally permit file names of any
length. This will cause it to create archives which are not compatible with the
native ar program on some systems. If this is a concern, the ‘f’ modifier may
be used to truncate file names when putting them in the archive.
‘i’ Insert new files before an existing member of the archive. If you use the modifier
‘i’, the name of an existing archive member must be present as the relpos
argument, before the archive specification. (same as ‘b’).
‘l’ This modifier is accepted but not used.
‘N’ Uses the count parameter. This is used if there are multiple entries in the
archive with the same name. Extract or delete instance count of the given
name from the archive.
‘o’ Preserve the original dates of members when extracting them. If you do not
specify this modifier, files extracted from the archive are stamped with the time
of extraction.
‘P’ Use the full path name when matching names in the archive. gnu ar can
not create an archive with a full path name (such archives are not POSIX
complaint), but other archive creators can. This option will cause gnu ar to
match file names using a complete path name, which can be convenient when
extracting a single file from an archive created by another tool.
‘s’ Write an object-file index into the archive, or update an existing one, even if no
other change is made to the archive. You may use this modifier flag either with
any operation, or alone. Running ‘ar s’ on an archive is equivalent to running
‘ranlib’ on it.
‘S’ Do not generate an archive symbol table. This can speed up building a large
library in several steps. The resulting archive can not be used with the linker.
In order to build a symbol table, you must omit the ‘S’ modifier on the last
execution of ‘ar’, or you must run ‘ranlib’ on the archive.
‘T’ Make the specified archive a thin archive. If it already exists and is a regular
archive, the existing members must be present in the same directory as archive.
‘u’ Normally, ‘ar r’. . . inserts all files listed into the archive. If you would like
to insert only those of the files you list that are newer than existing members
of the same names, use this modifier. The ‘u’ modifier is allowed only for the
operation ‘r’ (replace). In particular, the combination ‘qu’ is not allowed, since
checking the timestamps would lose any speed advantage from the operation
‘q’.
‘U’ Do not operate in deterministic mode. This is the inverse of the ‘D’ modi-
fier, above: added files and the archive index will get their actual UID, GID,
timestamp, and file mode values.
This is the default unless ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’.
‘v’ This modifier requests the verbose version of an operation. Many operations
display additional information, such as filenames processed, when the modifier
‘v’ is appended.
Chapter 1: ar 6
of ‘ar -t archive module ...’. When verbose output is on, the listing is like
‘ar -tv archive module ...’.
Output normally goes to the standard output stream; however, if you specify
outputfile as a final argument, ar directs the output to that file.
END Exit from ar, with a 0 exit code to indicate successful completion. This com-
mand does not save the output file; if you have changed the current archive
since the last SAVE command, those changes are lost.
EXTRACT module , module , ... module
Extract each named module from the current archive, writing them into the
current directory as separate files. Equivalent to ‘ar -x archive module ...’.
Requires prior use of OPEN or CREATE.
LIST Display full contents of the current archive, in “verbose” style regardless of the
state of VERBOSE. The effect is like ‘ar tv archive ’. (This single command is
a gnu ar enhancement, rather than present for MRI compatibility.)
Requires prior use of OPEN or CREATE.
OPEN archive
Opens an existing archive for use as the current archive (required for many
other commands). Any changes as the result of subsequent commands will not
actually affect archive until you next use SAVE.
REPLACE module , module , ... module
In the current archive, replace each existing module (named in the REPLACE ar-
guments) from files in the current working directory. To execute this command
without errors, both the file, and the module in the current archive, must exist.
Requires prior use of OPEN or CREATE.
VERBOSE Toggle an internal flag governing the output from DIRECTORY. When the flag
is on, DIRECTORY output matches output from ‘ar -tv ’. . . .
SAVE Commit your changes to the current archive, and actually save it as a file with
the name specified in the last CREATE or OPEN command.
Requires prior use of OPEN or CREATE.
Chapter 2: ld 9
2 ld
The gnu linker ld is now described in a separate manual. See Section “Overview” in Using
LD: the gnu linker.
Chapter 3: nm 10
3 nm
nm [‘-A’|‘-o’|‘--print-file-name’] [‘-a’|‘--debug-syms’]
[‘-B’|‘--format=bsd’] [‘-C’|‘--demangle’[=style ]]
[‘-D’|‘--dynamic’] [‘-f’format |‘--format=’format ]
[‘-g’|‘--extern-only’] [‘-h’|‘--help’]
[‘-l’|‘--line-numbers’] [‘--inlines’]
[‘-n’|‘-v’|‘--numeric-sort’]
[‘-P’|‘--portability’] [‘-p’|‘--no-sort’]
[‘-r’|‘--reverse-sort’] [‘-S’|‘--print-size’]
[‘-s’|‘--print-armap’] [‘-t’ radix |‘--radix=’radix ]
[‘-u’|‘--undefined-only’] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
[‘-X 32_64’] [‘--defined-only’] [‘--no-demangle’]
[‘--plugin’ name ] [‘--size-sort’] [‘--special-syms’]
[‘--synthetic’] [‘--with-symbol-versions’] [‘--target=’bfdname ]
[objfile ...]
gnu nm lists the symbols from object files objfile . . . . If no object files are listed as
arguments, nm assumes the file ‘a.out’.
For each symbol, nm shows:
• The symbol value, in the radix selected by options (see below), or hexadecimal by
default.
• The symbol type. At least the following types are used; others are, as well, depending
on the object file format. If lowercase, the symbol is usually local; if uppercase, the
symbol is global (external). There are however a few lowercase symbols that are shown
for special global symbols (u, v and w).
A The symbol’s value is absolute, and will not be changed by further linking.
B
b The symbol is in the uninitialized data section (known as BSS).
C The symbol is common. Common symbols are uninitialized data. When
linking, multiple common symbols may appear with the same name. If the
symbol is defined anywhere, the common symbols are treated as undefined
references. For more details on common symbols, see the discussion of
–warn-common in Section “Linker options” in The GNU linker.
D
d The symbol is in the initialized data section.
G
g The symbol is in an initialized data section for small objects. Some object
file formats permit more efficient access to small data objects, such as a
global int variable as opposed to a large global array.
i For PE format files this indicates that the symbol is in a section specific to
the implementation of DLLs. For ELF format files this indicates that the
symbol is an indirect function. This is a GNU extension to the standard
set of ELF symbol types. It indicates a symbol which if referenced by a
relocation does not evaluate to its address, but instead must be invoked at
runtime. The runtime execution will then return the value to be used in
the relocation.
Chapter 3: nm 11
-p
--no-sort
Do not bother to sort the symbols in any order; print them in the order en-
countered.
-P
--portability
Use the POSIX.2 standard output format instead of the default format. Equiv-
alent to ‘-f posix’.
-r
--reverse-sort
Reverse the order of the sort (whether numeric or alphabetic); let the last come
first.
-S
--print-size
Print both value and size of defined symbols for the bsd output style. This
option has no effect for object formats that do not record symbol sizes, unless
‘--size-sort’ is also used in which case a calculated size is displayed.
-s
--print-armap
When listing symbols from archive members, include the index: a mapping
(stored in the archive by ar or ranlib) of which modules contain definitions
for which names.
-t radix
--radix=radix
Use radix as the radix for printing the symbol values. It must be ‘d’ for decimal,
‘o’ for octal, or ‘x’ for hexadecimal.
-u
--undefined-only
Display only undefined symbols (those external to each object file).
-V
--version
Show the version number of nm and exit.
-X This option is ignored for compatibility with the AIX version of nm. It takes
one parameter which must be the string ‘32_64’. The default mode of AIX nm
corresponds to ‘-X 32’, which is not supported by gnu nm.
--defined-only
Display only defined symbols for each object file.
--plugin name
Load the plugin called name to add support for extra target types. This option
is only available if the toolchain has been built with plugin support enabled.
If ‘--plugin’ is not provided, but plugin support has been enabled then nm
iterates over the files in ‘${libdir}/bfd-plugins’ in alphabetic order and the
first plugin that claims the object in question is used.
Chapter 3: nm 14
Please note that this plugin search directory is not the one used by ld’s
‘-plugin’ option. In order to make nm use the linker plugin it must be copied
into the ‘${libdir}/bfd-plugins’ directory. For GCC based compilations
the linker plugin is called ‘liblto_plugin.so.0.0.0’. For Clang based
compilations it is called ‘LLVMgold.so’. The GCC plugin is always backwards
compatible with earlier versions, so it is sufficient to just copy the newest one.
--size-sort
Sort symbols by size. For ELF objects symbol sizes are read from the ELF, for
other object types the symbol sizes are computed as the difference between the
value of the symbol and the value of the symbol with the next higher value. If
the bsd output format is used the size of the symbol is printed, rather than the
value, and ‘-S’ must be used in order both size and value to be printed.
--special-syms
Display symbols which have a target-specific special meaning. These symbols
are usually used by the target for some special processing and are not normally
helpful when included in the normal symbol lists. For example for ARM targets
this option would skip the mapping symbols used to mark transitions between
ARM code, THUMB code and data.
--synthetic
Include synthetic symbols in the output. These are special symbols created by
the linker for various purposes. They are not shown by default since they are
not part of the binary’s original source code.
--with-symbol-versions
Enables the display of symbol version information if any exists. The version
string is displayed as a suffix to the symbol name, preceeded by an @ character.
For example ‘foo@VER_1’. If the version is the default version to be used when
resolving unversioned references to the symbol then it is displayed as a suffix
preceeded by two @ characters. For example ‘foo@@VER_2’.
--target=bfdname
Specify an object code format other than your system’s default format. See
Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
Chapter 4: objcopy 15
4 objcopy
objcopy [‘-F’ bfdname |‘--target=’bfdname ]
[‘-I’ bfdname |‘--input-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-O’ bfdname |‘--output-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-B’ bfdarch |‘--binary-architecture=’bfdarch ]
[‘-S’|‘--strip-all’]
[‘-g’|‘--strip-debug’]
[‘-K’ symbolname |‘--keep-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-N’ symbolname |‘--strip-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘--strip-unneeded-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-G’ symbolname |‘--keep-global-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘--localize-hidden’]
[‘-L’ symbolname |‘--localize-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘--globalize-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-W’ symbolname |‘--weaken-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-w’|‘--wildcard’]
[‘-x’|‘--discard-all’]
[‘-X’|‘--discard-locals’]
[‘-b’ byte |‘--byte=’byte ]
[‘-i’ [breadth ]|‘--interleave’[=breadth ]]
[‘--interleave-width=’width ]
[‘-j’ sectionpattern |‘--only-section=’sectionpattern ]
[‘-R’ sectionpattern |‘--remove-section=’sectionpattern ]
[‘--remove-relocations=’sectionpattern ]
[‘-p’|‘--preserve-dates’]
[‘-D’|‘--enable-deterministic-archives’]
[‘-U’|‘--disable-deterministic-archives’]
[‘--debugging’]
[‘--gap-fill=’val ]
[‘--pad-to=’address ]
[‘--set-start=’val ]
[‘--adjust-start=’incr ]
[‘--change-addresses=’incr ]
[‘--change-section-address’ sectionpattern {=,+,-}val ]
[‘--change-section-lma’ sectionpattern {=,+,-}val ]
[‘--change-section-vma’ sectionpattern {=,+,-}val ]
[‘--change-warnings’] [‘--no-change-warnings’]
[‘--set-section-flags’ sectionpattern =flags ]
[‘--add-section’ sectionname =filename ]
[‘--dump-section’ sectionname =filename ]
[‘--update-section’ sectionname =filename ]
[‘--rename-section’ oldname =newname [,flags ]]
[‘--long-section-names’ {enable,disable,keep}]
[‘--change-leading-char’] [‘--remove-leading-char’]
[‘--reverse-bytes=’num ]
[‘--srec-len=’ival ] [‘--srec-forceS3’]
[‘--redefine-sym’ old =new ]
[‘--redefine-syms=’filename ]
[‘--weaken’]
[‘--keep-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--strip-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--strip-unneeded-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--keep-global-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--localize-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--globalize-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--weaken-symbols=’filename ]
[‘--add-symbol’ name =[section :]value [,flags ]
[‘--alt-machine-code=’index ]
Chapter 4: objcopy 16
[‘--prefix-symbols=’string ]
[‘--prefix-sections=’string ]
[‘--prefix-alloc-sections=’string ]
[‘--add-gnu-debuglink=’path-to-file ]
[‘--keep-file-symbols’]
[‘--only-keep-debug’]
[‘--strip-dwo’]
[‘--extract-dwo’]
[‘--extract-symbol’]
[‘--writable-text’]
[‘--readonly-text’]
[‘--pure’]
[‘--impure’]
[‘--file-alignment=’num ]
[‘--heap=’size ]
[‘--image-base=’address ]
[‘--section-alignment=’num ]
[‘--stack=’size ]
[‘--subsystem=’which :major .minor ]
[‘--compress-debug-sections’]
[‘--decompress-debug-sections’]
[‘--elf-stt-common=val ’]
[‘--merge-notes’]
[‘--no-merge-notes’]
[‘-v’|‘--verbose’]
[‘-V’|‘--version’]
[‘--help’] [‘--info’]
infile [outfile ]
The gnu objcopy utility copies the contents of an object file to another. objcopy uses
the gnu bfd Library to read and write the object files. It can write the destination object
file in a format different from that of the source object file. The exact behavior of objcopy
is controlled by command-line options. Note that objcopy should be able to copy a fully
linked file between any two formats. However, copying a relocatable object file between any
two formats may not work as expected.
objcopy creates temporary files to do its translations and deletes them afterward.
objcopy uses bfd to do all its translation work; it has access to all the formats described
in bfd and thus is able to recognize most formats without being told explicitly. See Section
“BFD” in Using LD.
objcopy can be used to generate S-records by using an output target of ‘srec’ (e.g., use
‘-O srec’).
objcopy can be used to generate a raw binary file by using an output target of ‘binary’
(e.g., use ‘-O binary’). When objcopy generates a raw binary file, it will essentially pro-
duce a memory dump of the contents of the input object file. All symbols and relocation
information will be discarded. The memory dump will start at the load address of the
lowest section copied into the output file.
When generating an S-record or a raw binary file, it may be helpful to use ‘-S’ to
remove sections containing debugging information. In some cases ‘-R’ will be useful to
remove sections which contain information that is not needed by the binary file.
Note—objcopy is not able to change the endianness of its input files. If the input format
has an endianness (some formats do not), objcopy can only copy the inputs into file formats
Chapter 4: objcopy 17
that have the same endianness or which have no endianness (e.g., ‘srec’). (However, see
the ‘--reverse-bytes’ option.)
infile
outfile The input and output files, respectively. If you do not specify outfile, objcopy
creates a temporary file and destructively renames the result with the name of
infile.
-I bfdname
--input-target=bfdname
Consider the source file’s object format to be bfdname, rather than attempting
to deduce it. See Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-O bfdname
--output-target=bfdname
Write the output file using the object format bfdname. See Section 19.1 [Target
Selection], page 79, for more information.
-F bfdname
--target=bfdname
Use bfdname as the object format for both the input and the output file;
i.e., simply transfer data from source to destination with no translation. See
Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-B bfdarch
--binary-architecture=bfdarch
Useful when transforming a architecture-less input file into an object file. In this
case the output architecture can be set to bfdarch. This option will be ignored
if the input file has a known bfdarch. You can access this binary data inside a
program by referencing the special symbols that are created by the conversion
process. These symbols are called binary objfile start, binary objfile end
and binary objfile size. e.g. you can transform a picture file into an object
file and then access it in your code using these symbols.
-j sectionpattern
--only-section=sectionpattern
Copy only the indicated sections from the input file to the output file. This
option may be given more than once. Note that using this option inappropri-
ately may make the output file unusable. Wildcard characters are accepted in
sectionpattern.
If the first character of sectionpattern is the exclamation point (!) then match-
ing sections will not be copied, even if earlier use of ‘--only-section’ on the
same command line would otherwise copy it. For example:
--only-section=.text.* --only-section=!.text.foo
will copy all sectinos maching ’.text.*’ but not the section ’.text.foo’.
-R sectionpattern
--remove-section=sectionpattern
Remove any section matching sectionpattern from the output file. This option
may be given more than once. Note that using this option inappropriately may
Chapter 4: objcopy 18
make the output file unusable. Wildcard characters are accepted in section-
pattern. Using both the ‘-j’ and ‘-R’ options together results in undefined
behaviour.
If the first character of sectionpattern is the exclamation point (!) then match-
ing sections will not be removed even if an earlier use of ‘--remove-section’
on the same command line would otherwise remove it. For example:
--remove-section=.text.* --remove-section=!.text.foo
will remove all sections matching the pattern ’.text.*’, but will not remove the
section ’.text.foo’.
--remove-relocations=sectionpattern
Remove relocations from the output file for any section matching sectionpat-
tern. This option may be given more than once. Note that using this option
inappropriately may make the output file unusable. Wildcard characters are
accepted in sectionpattern. For example:
--remove-relocations=.text.*
will remove the relocations for all sections matching the patter ’.text.*’.
If the first character of sectionpattern is the exclamation point (!) then match-
ing sections will not have their relocation removed even if an earlier use of
‘--remove-relocations’ on the same command line would otherwise cause
the relocations to be removed. For example:
--remove-relocations=.text.* --remove-relocations=!.text.foo
will remove all relocations for sections matching the pattern ’.text.*’, but will
not remove relocations for the section ’.text.foo’.
-S
--strip-all
Do not copy relocation and symbol information from the source file.
-g
--strip-debug
Do not copy debugging symbols or sections from the source file.
--strip-unneeded
Strip all symbols that are not needed for relocation processing.
-K symbolname
--keep-symbol=symbolname
When stripping symbols, keep symbol symbolname even if it would normally
be stripped. This option may be given more than once.
-N symbolname
--strip-symbol=symbolname
Do not copy symbol symbolname from the source file. This option may be
given more than once.
--strip-unneeded-symbol=symbolname
Do not copy symbol symbolname from the source file unless it is needed by a
relocation. This option may be given more than once.
Chapter 4: objcopy 19
-G symbolname
--keep-global-symbol=symbolname
Keep only symbol symbolname global. Make all other symbols local to the file,
so that they are not visible externally. This option may be given more than
once.
--localize-hidden
In an ELF object, mark all symbols that have hidden or internal visibility as
local. This option applies on top of symbol-specific localization options such as
‘-L’.
-L symbolname
--localize-symbol=symbolname
Convert a global or weak symbol called symbolname into a local symbol, so
that it is not visible externally. This option may be given more than once.
Note - unique symbols are not converted.
-W symbolname
--weaken-symbol=symbolname
Make symbol symbolname weak. This option may be given more than once.
--globalize-symbol=symbolname
Give symbol symbolname global scoping so that it is visible outside of the file
in which it is defined. This option may be given more than once.
-w
--wildcard
Permit regular expressions in symbolnames used in other command line options.
The question mark (?), asterisk (*), backslash (\) and square brackets ([])
operators can be used anywhere in the symbol name. If the first character of
the symbol name is the exclamation point (!) then the sense of the switch is
reversed for that symbol. For example:
-w -W !foo -W fo*
would cause objcopy to weaken all symbols that start with “fo” except for the
symbol “foo”.
-x
--discard-all
Do not copy non-global symbols from the source file.
-X
--discard-locals
Do not copy compiler-generated local symbols. (These usually start with ‘L’ or
‘.’.)
-b byte
--byte=byte
If interleaving has been enabled via the ‘--interleave’ option then start the
range of bytes to keep at the byteth byte. byte can be in the range from 0 to
breadth-1, where breadth is the value given by the ‘--interleave’ option.
Chapter 4: objcopy 20
-i [breadth ]
--interleave[=breadth ]
Only copy a range out of every breadth bytes. (Header data is not affected).
Select which byte in the range begins the copy with the ‘--byte’ option. Select
the width of the range with the ‘--interleave-width’ option.
This option is useful for creating files to program rom. It is typically used with
an srec output target. Note that objcopy will complain if you do not specify
the ‘--byte’ option as well.
The default interleave breadth is 4, so with ‘--byte’ set to 0, objcopy would
copy the first byte out of every four bytes from the input to the output.
--interleave-width=width
When used with the ‘--interleave’ option, copy width bytes at a time. The
start of the range of bytes to be copied is set by the ‘--byte’ option, and the
extent of the range is set with the ‘--interleave’ option.
The default value for this option is 1. The value of width plus the byte value
set by the ‘--byte’ option must not exceed the interleave breadth set by the
‘--interleave’ option.
This option can be used to create images for two 16-bit flashes interleaved
in a 32-bit bus by passing ‘-b 0 -i 4 --interleave-width=2’ and ‘-b 2
-i 4 --interleave-width=2’ to two objcopy commands. If the input was
’12345678’ then the outputs would be ’1256’ and ’3478’ respectively.
-p
--preserve-dates
Set the access and modification dates of the output file to be the same as those
of the input file.
-D
--enable-deterministic-archives
Operate in deterministic mode. When copying archive members and writing
the archive index, use zero for UIDs, GIDs, timestamps, and use consistent file
modes for all files.
If ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’, then
this mode is on by default. It can be disabled with the ‘-U’ option, below.
-U
--disable-deterministic-archives
Do not operate in deterministic mode. This is the inverse of the ‘-D’ option,
above: when copying archive members and writing the archive index, use their
actual UID, GID, timestamp, and file mode values.
This is the default unless ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’.
--debugging
Convert debugging information, if possible. This is not the default because
only certain debugging formats are supported, and the conversion process can
be time consuming.
Chapter 4: objcopy 21
--gap-fill val
Fill gaps between sections with val. This operation applies to the load address
(LMA) of the sections. It is done by increasing the size of the section with the
lower address, and filling in the extra space created with val.
--pad-to address
Pad the output file up to the load address address. This is done by increasing
the size of the last section. The extra space is filled in with the value specified
by ‘--gap-fill’ (default zero).
--set-start val
Set the start address of the new file to val. Not all object file formats support
setting the start address.
--change-start incr
--adjust-start incr
Change the start address by adding incr. Not all object file formats support
setting the start address.
--change-addresses incr
--adjust-vma incr
Change the VMA and LMA addresses of all sections, as well as the start address,
by adding incr. Some object file formats do not permit section addresses to be
changed arbitrarily. Note that this does not relocate the sections; if the program
expects sections to be loaded at a certain address, and this option is used to
change the sections such that they are loaded at a different address, the program
may fail.
--change-section-address sectionpattern {=,+,-}val
--adjust-section-vma sectionpattern {=,+,-}val
Set or change both the VMA address and the LMA address of any section
matching sectionpattern. If ‘=’ is used, the section address is set to val. Other-
wise, val is added to or subtracted from the section address. See the comments
under ‘--change-addresses’, above. If sectionpattern does not match any sec-
tions in the input file, a warning will be issued, unless ‘--no-change-warnings’
is used.
--change-section-lma sectionpattern {=,+,-}val
Set or change the LMA address of any sections matching sectionpattern. The
LMA address is the address where the section will be loaded into memory at
program load time. Normally this is the same as the VMA address, which is
the address of the section at program run time, but on some systems, especially
those where a program is held in ROM, the two can be different. If ‘=’ is used,
the section address is set to val. Otherwise, val is added to or subtracted from
the section address. See the comments under ‘--change-addresses’, above. If
sectionpattern does not match any sections in the input file, a warning will be
issued, unless ‘--no-change-warnings’ is used.
--change-section-vma sectionpattern {=,+,-}val
Set or change the VMA address of any section matching sectionpattern. The
VMA address is the address where the section will be located once the program
Chapter 4: objcopy 22
has started executing. Normally this is the same as the LMA address, which
is the address where the section will be loaded into memory, but on some
systems, especially those where a program is held in ROM, the two can be
different. If ‘=’ is used, the section address is set to val. Otherwise, val is
added to or subtracted from the section address. See the comments under
‘--change-addresses’, above. If sectionpattern does not match any sections
in the input file, a warning will be issued, unless ‘--no-change-warnings’ is
used.
--change-warnings
--adjust-warnings
If ‘--change-section-address’ or ‘--change-section-lma’ or
‘--change-section-vma’ is used, and the section pattern does not match any
sections, issue a warning. This is the default.
--no-change-warnings
--no-adjust-warnings
Do not issue a warning if ‘--change-section-address’ or
‘--adjust-section-lma’ or ‘--adjust-section-vma’ is used, even if
the section pattern does not match any sections.
--set-section-flags sectionpattern =flags
Set the flags for any sections matching sectionpattern. The flags argument is
a comma separated string of flag names. The recognized names are ‘alloc’,
‘contents’, ‘load’, ‘noload’, ‘readonly’, ‘code’, ‘data’, ‘rom’, ‘share’, and
‘debug’. You can set the ‘contents’ flag for a section which does not have
contents, but it is not meaningful to clear the ‘contents’ flag of a section
which does have contents–just remove the section instead. Not all flags are
meaningful for all object file formats.
--add-section sectionname =filename
Add a new section named sectionname while copying the file. The contents
of the new section are taken from the file filename. The size of the section
will be the size of the file. This option only works on file formats which can
support sections with arbitrary names. Note - it may be necessary to use
the ‘--set-section-flags’ option to set the attributes of the newly created
section.
--dump-section sectionname =filename
Place the contents of section named sectionname into the file filename, over-
writing any contents that may have been there previously. This option is the
inverse of ‘--add-section’. This option is similar to the ‘--only-section’
option except that it does not create a formatted file, it just dumps the con-
tents as raw binary data, without applying any relocations. The option can be
specified more than once.
--update-section sectionname =filename
Replace the existing contents of a section named sectionname with the contents
of file filename. The size of the section will be adjusted to the size of the file.
The section flags for sectionname will be unchanged. For ELF format files the
Chapter 4: objcopy 23
section to segment mapping will also remain unchanged, something which is not
possible using ‘--remove-section’ followed by ‘--add-section’. The option
can be specified more than once.
Note - it is possible to use ‘--rename-section’ and ‘--update-section’ to
both update and rename a section from one command line. In this case, pass
the original section name to ‘--update-section’, and the original and new
section names to ‘--rename-section’.
--add-symbol name =[section :]value [,flags ]
Add a new symbol named name while copying the file. This option may be
specified multiple times. If the section is given, the symbol will be associated
with and relative to that section, otherwise it will be an ABS symbol. Specifying
an undefined section will result in a fatal error. There is no check for the value,
it will be taken as specified. Symbol flags can be specified and not all flags
will be meaningful for all object file formats. By default, the symbol will be
global. The special flag ’before=othersym’ will insert the new symbol in front
of the specified othersym, otherwise the symbol(s) will be added at the end of
the symbol table in the order they appear.
--rename-section oldname =newname [,flags ]
Rename a section from oldname to newname, optionally changing the section’s
flags to flags in the process. This has the advantage over usng a linker script
to perform the rename in that the output stays as an object file and does not
become a linked executable.
This option is particularly helpful when the input format is binary, since this
will always create a section called .data. If for example, you wanted instead
to create a section called .rodata containing binary data you could use the
following command line to achieve it:
objcopy -I binary -O <output_format> -B <architecture> \
--rename-section .data=.rodata,alloc,load,readonly,data,contents \
<input_binary_file> <output_object_file>
--long-section-names {enable,disable,keep}
Controls the handling of long section names when processing COFF and PE-
COFF object formats. The default behaviour, ‘keep’, is to preserve long section
names if any are present in the input file. The ‘enable’ and ‘disable’ options
forcibly enable or disable the use of long section names in the output object;
when ‘disable’ is in effect, any long section names in the input object will be
truncated. The ‘enable’ option will only emit long section names if any are
present in the inputs; this is mostly the same as ‘keep’, but it is left undefined
whether the ‘enable’ option might force the creation of an empty string table
in the output file.
--change-leading-char
Some object file formats use special characters at the start of symbols. The
most common such character is underscore, which compilers often add before
every symbol. This option tells objcopy to change the leading character of every
symbol when it converts between object file formats. If the object file formats
Chapter 4: objcopy 24
use the same leading character, this option has no effect. Otherwise, it will add
a character, or remove a character, or change a character, as appropriate.
--remove-leading-char
If the first character of a global symbol is a special symbol leading character
used by the object file format, remove the character. The most common symbol
leading character is underscore. This option will remove a leading underscore
from all global symbols. This can be useful if you want to link together objects
of different file formats with different conventions for symbol names. This is
different from ‘--change-leading-char’ because it always changes the symbol
name when appropriate, regardless of the object file format of the output file.
--reverse-bytes=num
Reverse the bytes in a section with output contents. A section length must be
evenly divisible by the value given in order for the swap to be able to take place.
Reversing takes place before the interleaving is performed.
This option is used typically in generating ROM images for problematic target
systems. For example, on some target boards, the 32-bit words fetched from
8-bit ROMs are re-assembled in little-endian byte order regardless of the CPU
byte order. Depending on the programming model, the endianness of the ROM
may need to be modified.
Consider a simple file with a section containing the following eight bytes:
12345678.
Using ‘--reverse-bytes=2’ for the above example, the bytes in the output file
would be ordered 21436587.
Using ‘--reverse-bytes=4’ for the above example, the bytes in the output file
would be ordered 43218765.
By using ‘--reverse-bytes=2’ for the above example, followed by
‘--reverse-bytes=4’ on the output file, the bytes in the second output file
would be ordered 34127856.
--srec-len=ival
Meaningful only for srec output. Set the maximum length of the Srecords being
produced to ival. This length covers both address, data and crc fields.
--srec-forceS3
Meaningful only for srec output. Avoid generation of S1/S2 records, creating
S3-only record format.
--redefine-sym old =new
Change the name of a symbol old, to new. This can be useful when one is
trying link two things together for which you have no source, and there are
name collisions.
--redefine-syms=filename
Apply ‘--redefine-sym’ to each symbol pair "old new" listed in the file file-
name. filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol pair per line. Line com-
ments may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given
more than once.
Chapter 4: objcopy 25
--weaken Change all global symbols in the file to be weak. This can be useful when
building an object which will be linked against other objects using the ‘-R’
option to the linker. This option is only effective when using an object file
format which supports weak symbols.
--keep-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--keep-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file filename. file-
name is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line comments may
be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given more than once.
--strip-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--strip-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file filename. file-
name is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line comments may
be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given more than once.
--strip-unneeded-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--strip-unneeded-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file file-
name. filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line
comments may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given
more than once.
--keep-global-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--keep-global-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file file-
name. filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line
comments may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given
more than once.
--localize-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--localize-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file filename.
filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line comments
may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given more than
once.
--globalize-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--globalize-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file filename.
filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line comments
may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given more than
once.
--weaken-symbols=filename
Apply ‘--weaken-symbol’ option to each symbol listed in the file filename.
filename is simply a flat file, with one symbol name per line. Line comments
may be introduced by the hash character. This option may be given more than
once.
--alt-machine-code=index
If the output architecture has alternate machine codes, use the indexth code
instead of the default one. This is useful in case a machine is assigned an
official code and the tool-chain adopts the new code, but other applications
still depend on the original code being used. For ELF based architectures if the
index alternative does not exist then the value is treated as an absolute number
to be stored in the e machine field of the ELF header.
Chapter 4: objcopy 26
--writable-text
Mark the output text as writable. This option isn’t meaningful for all object
file formats.
--readonly-text
Make the output text write protected. This option isn’t meaningful for all
object file formats.
--pure Mark the output file as demand paged. This option isn’t meaningful for all
object file formats.
--impure Mark the output file as impure. This option isn’t meaningful for all object file
formats.
--prefix-symbols=string
Prefix all symbols in the output file with string.
--prefix-sections=string
Prefix all section names in the output file with string.
--prefix-alloc-sections=string
Prefix all the names of all allocated sections in the output file with string.
--add-gnu-debuglink=path-to-file
Creates a .gnu debuglink section which contains a reference to path-to-file and
adds it to the output file. Note: the file at path-to-file must exist. Part of the
process of adding the .gnu debuglink section involves embedding a checksum of
the contents of the debug info file into the section.
If the debug info file is built in one location but it is going to be installed at
a later time into a different location then do not use the path to the installed
location. The ‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ option will fail because the installed file
does not exist yet. Instead put the debug info file in the current directory and
use the ‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ option without any directory components, like
this:
objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.debug
At debug time the debugger will attempt to look for the separate debug info file
in a set of known locations. The exact set of these locations varies depending
upon the distribution being used, but it typically includes:
* The same directory as the executable.
* A sub-directory of the directory containing the executable
called .debug
* A global debug directory such as /usr/lib/debug.
As long as the debug info file has been installed into one of these locations
before the debugger is run everything should work correctly.
--keep-file-symbols
When stripping a file, perhaps with ‘--strip-debug’ or ‘--strip-unneeded’,
retain any symbols specifying source file names, which would otherwise get
stripped.
Chapter 4: objcopy 27
--only-keep-debug
Strip a file, removing contents of any sections that would not be stripped by
‘--strip-debug’ and leaving the debugging sections intact. In ELF files, this
preserves all note sections in the output.
Note - the section headers of the stripped sections are preserved, including their
sizes, but the contents of the section are discarded. The section headers are
preserved so that other tools can match up the debuginfo file with the real
executable, even if that executable has been relocated to a different address
space.
The intention is that this option will be used in conjunction with
‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ to create a two part executable. One a stripped
binary which will occupy less space in RAM and in a distribution and the
second a debugging information file which is only needed if debugging abilities
are required. The suggested procedure to create these files is as follows:
1. Link the executable as normal. Assuming that is is called foo then...
2. Run objcopy --only-keep-debug foo foo.dbg to create a file containing
the debugging info.
3. Run objcopy --strip-debug foo to create a stripped executable.
4. Run objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.dbg foo to add a link to the
debugging info into the stripped executable.
Note—the choice of .dbg as an extension for the debug info file is arbitrary.
Also the --only-keep-debug step is optional. You could instead do this:
1. Link the executable as normal.
2. Copy foo to foo.full
3. Run objcopy --strip-debug foo
4. Run objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.full foo
i.e., the file pointed to by the ‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ can be the full executable.
It does not have to be a file created by the ‘--only-keep-debug’ switch.
Note—this switch is only intended for use on fully linked files. It does not make
sense to use it on object files where the debugging information may be incom-
plete. Besides the gnu debuglink feature currently only supports the presence
of one filename containing debugging information, not multiple filenames on a
one-per-object-file basis.
--strip-dwo
Remove the contents of all DWARF .dwo sections, leaving the remaining de-
bugging sections and all symbols intact. This option is intended for use by the
compiler as part of the ‘-gsplit-dwarf’ option, which splits debug information
between the .o file and a separate .dwo file. The compiler generates all debug
information in the same file, then uses the ‘--extract-dwo’ option to copy the
.dwo sections to the .dwo file, then the ‘--strip-dwo’ option to remove those
sections from the original .o file.
--extract-dwo
Extract the contents of all DWARF .dwo sections. See the ‘--strip-dwo’ option
for more information.
Chapter 4: objcopy 28
--file-alignment num
Specify the file alignment. Sections in the file will always begin at file offsets
which are multiples of this number. This defaults to 512. [This option is specific
to PE targets.]
--heap reserve
--heap reserve ,commit
Specify the number of bytes of memory to reserve (and optionally commit) to
be used as heap for this program. [This option is specific to PE targets.]
--image-base value
Use value as the base address of your program or dll. This is the lowest memory
location that will be used when your program or dll is loaded. To reduce the
need to relocate and improve performance of your dlls, each should have a
unique base address and not overlap any other dlls. The default is 0x400000 for
executables, and 0x10000000 for dlls. [This option is specific to PE targets.]
--section-alignment num
Sets the section alignment. Sections in memory will always begin at addresses
which are a multiple of this number. Defaults to 0x1000. [This option is specific
to PE targets.]
--stack reserve
--stack reserve ,commit
Specify the number of bytes of memory to reserve (and optionally commit) to
be used as stack for this program. [This option is specific to PE targets.]
--subsystem which
--subsystem which :major
--subsystem which :major .minor
Specifies the subsystem under which your program will execute. The legal
values for which are native, windows, console, posix, efi-app, efi-bsd,
efi-rtd, sal-rtd, and xbox. You may optionally set the subsystem version
also. Numeric values are also accepted for which. [This option is specific to PE
targets.]
--extract-symbol
Keep the file’s section flags and symbols but remove all section data. Specifi-
cally, the option:
• removes the contents of all sections;
• sets the size of every section to zero; and
• sets the file’s start address to zero.
This option is used to build a ‘.sym’ file for a VxWorks kernel. It can also be
a useful way of reducing the size of a ‘--just-symbols’ linker input file.
--compress-debug-sections
Compress DWARF debug sections using zlib with SHF COMPRESSED from
the ELF ABI. Note - if compression would actually make a section larger, then
it is not compressed.
Chapter 4: objcopy 29
--compress-debug-sections=none
--compress-debug-sections=zlib
--compress-debug-sections=zlib-gnu
--compress-debug-sections=zlib-gabi
For ELF files, these options control how DWARF debug sections are
compressed. ‘--compress-debug-sections=none’ is equivalent to
‘--decompress-debug-sections’. ‘--compress-debug-sections=zlib’
and ‘--compress-debug-sections=zlib-gabi’ are equivalent to
‘--compress-debug-sections’. ‘--compress-debug-sections=zlib-gnu’
compresses DWARF debug sections using zlib. The debug sections are
renamed to begin with ‘.zdebug’ instead of ‘.debug’. Note - if compression
would actually make a section larger, then it is not compressed nor renamed.
--decompress-debug-sections
Decompress DWARF debug sections using zlib. The original section names of
the compressed sections are restored.
--elf-stt-common=yes
--elf-stt-common=no
For ELF files, these options control whether common symbols should be con-
verted to the STT_COMMON or STT_OBJECT type. ‘--elf-stt-common=yes’ con-
verts common symbol type to STT_COMMON. ‘--elf-stt-common=no’ converts
common symbol type to STT_OBJECT.
--merge-notes
--no-merge-notes
For ELF files, attempt (or do not attempt) to reduce the size of any SHT NOTE
type sections by removing duplicate notes.
-V
--version
Show the version number of objcopy.
-v
--verbose
Verbose output: list all object files modified. In the case of archives, ‘objcopy
-V’ lists all members of the archive.
--help Show a summary of the options to objcopy.
--info Display a list showing all architectures and object formats available.
Chapter 5: objdump 30
5 objdump
objdump [‘-a’|‘--archive-headers’]
[‘-b’ bfdname |‘--target=bfdname ’]
[‘-C’|‘--demangle’[=style ] ]
[‘-d’|‘--disassemble’]
[‘-D’|‘--disassemble-all’]
[‘-z’|‘--disassemble-zeroes’]
[‘-EB’|‘-EL’|‘--endian=’{big | little }]
[‘-f’|‘--file-headers’]
[‘-F’|‘--file-offsets’]
[‘--file-start-context’]
[‘-g’|‘--debugging’]
[‘-e’|‘--debugging-tags’]
[‘-h’|‘--section-headers’|‘--headers’]
[‘-i’|‘--info’]
[‘-j’ section |‘--section=’section ]
[‘-l’|‘--line-numbers’]
[‘-S’|‘--source’]
[‘-m’ machine |‘--architecture=’machine ]
[‘-M’ options |‘--disassembler-options=’options ]
[‘-p’|‘--private-headers’]
[‘-P’ options |‘--private=’options ]
[‘-r’|‘--reloc’]
[‘-R’|‘--dynamic-reloc’]
[‘-s’|‘--full-contents’]
[‘-W[lLiaprmfFsoRtUuTgAckK]’|
‘--dwarf’[=rawline,=decodedline,=info,=abbrev,=pubnames,=aranges,=macro,=frames,=frames-
interp,=str,=loc,=Ranges,=pubtypes,=trace_info,=trace_abbrev,=trace_aranges,=gdb_index,=addr,=cu_index,=l
links]
[‘-G’|‘--stabs’]
[‘-t’|‘--syms’]
[‘-T’|‘--dynamic-syms’]
[‘-x’|‘--all-headers’]
[‘-w’|‘--wide’]
[‘--start-address=’address ]
[‘--stop-address=’address ]
[‘--prefix-addresses’]
[‘--[no-]show-raw-insn’]
[‘--adjust-vma=’offset ]
[‘--dwarf-depth=n ’]
[‘--dwarf-start=n ’]
[‘--special-syms’]
[‘--prefix=’prefix ]
[‘--prefix-strip=’level ]
[‘--insn-width=’width ]
[‘-V’|‘--version’]
[‘-H’|‘--help’]
objfile ...
objdump displays information about one or more object files. The options control what
particular information to display. This information is mostly useful to programmers who are
working on the compilation tools, as opposed to programmers who just want their program
to compile and work.
objfile . . . are the object files to be examined. When you specify archives, objdump shows
information on each of the member object files.
Chapter 5: objdump 31
The long and short forms of options, shown here as alternatives, are equivalent. At least
one option from the list ‘-a,-d,-D,-e,-f,-g,-G,-h,-H,-p,-P,-r,-R,-s,-S,-t,-T,-V,-x’
must be given.
-a
--archive-header
If any of the objfile files are archives, display the archive header information
(in a format similar to ‘ls -l’). Besides the information you could list with ‘ar
tv’, ‘objdump -a’ shows the object file format of each archive member.
--adjust-vma=offset
When dumping information, first add offset to all the section addresses. This
is useful if the section addresses do not correspond to the symbol table, which
can happen when putting sections at particular addresses when using a format
which can not represent section addresses, such as a.out.
-b bfdname
--target=bfdname
Specify that the object-code format for the object files is bfdname. This option
may not be necessary; objdump can automatically recognize many formats.
For example,
objdump -b oasys -m vax -h fu.o
displays summary information from the section headers (‘-h’) of ‘fu.o’, which
is explicitly identified (‘-m’) as a VAX object file in the format produced by
Oasys compilers. You can list the formats available with the ‘-i’ option. See
Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-C
--demangle[=style ]
Decode (demangle) low-level symbol names into user-level names. Besides re-
moving any initial underscore prepended by the system, this makes C++ func-
tion names readable. Different compilers have different mangling styles. The
optional demangling style argument can be used to choose an appropriate de-
mangling style for your compiler. See Chapter 10 [c++filt], page 52, for more
information on demangling.
-g
--debugging
Display debugging information. This attempts to parse STABS and IEEE de-
bugging format information stored in the file and print it out using a C like
syntax. If neither of these formats are found this option falls back on the ‘-W’
option to print any DWARF information in the file.
-e
--debugging-tags
Like ‘-g’, but the information is generated in a format compatible with ctags
tool.
Chapter 5: objdump 32
-d
--disassemble
Display the assembler mnemonics for the machine instructions from objfile.
This option only disassembles those sections which are expected to contain
instructions.
-D
--disassemble-all
Like ‘-d’, but disassemble the contents of all sections, not just those expected
to contain instructions.
This option also has a subtle effect on the disassembly of instructions in code
sections. When option ‘-d’ is in effect objdump will assume that any symbols
present in a code section occur on the boundary between instructions and it
will refuse to disassemble across such a boundary. When option ‘-D’ is in effect
however this assumption is supressed. This means that it is possible for the
output of ‘-d’ and ‘-D’ to differ if, for example, data is stored in code sections.
If the target is an ARM architecture this switch also has the effect of forcing
the disassembler to decode pieces of data found in code sections as if they were
instructions.
--prefix-addresses
When disassembling, print the complete address on each line. This is the older
disassembly format.
-EB
-EL
--endian={big|little}
Specify the endianness of the object files. This only affects disassembly. This
can be useful when disassembling a file format which does not describe endian-
ness information, such as S-records.
-f
--file-headers
Display summary information from the overall header of each of the objfile files.
-F
--file-offsets
When disassembling sections, whenever a symbol is displayed, also display the
file offset of the region of data that is about to be dumped. If zeroes are being
skipped, then when disassembly resumes, tell the user how many zeroes were
skipped and the file offset of the location from where the disassembly resumes.
When dumping sections, display the file offset of the location from where the
dump starts.
--file-start-context
Specify that when displaying interlisted source code/disassembly (assumes ‘-S’)
from a file that has not yet been displayed, extend the context to the start of
the file.
Chapter 5: objdump 33
-h
--section-headers
--headers
Display summary information from the section headers of the object file.
File segments may be relocated to nonstandard addresses, for example by using
the ‘-Ttext’, ‘-Tdata’, or ‘-Tbss’ options to ld. However, some object file
formats, such as a.out, do not store the starting address of the file segments.
In those situations, although ld relocates the sections correctly, using ‘objdump
-h’ to list the file section headers cannot show the correct addresses. Instead,
it shows the usual addresses, which are implicit for the target.
Note, in some cases it is possible for a section to have both the READONLY
and the NOREAD attributes set. In such cases the NOREAD attribute takes
precedence, but objdump will report both since the exact setting of the flag bits
might be important.
-H
--help Print a summary of the options to objdump and exit.
-i
--info Display a list showing all architectures and object formats available for specifi-
cation with ‘-b’ or ‘-m’.
-j name
--section=name
Display information only for section name.
-l
--line-numbers
Label the display (using debugging information) with the filename and source
line numbers corresponding to the object code or relocs shown. Only useful
with ‘-d’, ‘-D’, or ‘-r’.
-m machine
--architecture=machine
Specify the architecture to use when disassembling object files. This can be
useful when disassembling object files which do not describe architecture infor-
mation, such as S-records. You can list the available architectures with the ‘-i’
option.
If the target is an ARM architecture then this switch has an additional effect.
It restricts the disassembly to only those instructions supported by the archi-
tecture specified by machine. If it is necessary to use this switch because the
input file does not contain any architecture information, but it is also desired
to disassemble all the instructions use ‘-marm’.
-M options
--disassembler-options=options
Pass target specific information to the disassembler. Only supported on some
targets. If it is necessary to specify more than one disassembler option then
multiple ‘-M’ options can be used or can be placed together into a comma
separated list.
Chapter 5: objdump 34
For ARC, ‘dsp’ controls the printing of DSP instructions, ‘spfp’ selects the
printing of FPX single precision FP instructions, ‘dpfp’ selects the printing
of FPX double precision FP instructions, ‘quarkse_em’ selects the printing of
special QuarkSE-EM instructions, ‘fpuda’ selects the printing of double pre-
cision assist instructions, ‘fpus’ selects the printing of FPU single precision
FP instructions, while ‘fpud’ selects the printing of FPU souble precision FP
instructions. Additionally, one can choose to have all the immediates printed
in hexadecimal using ‘hex’. By default, the short immediates are printed us-
ing the decimal representation, while the long immediate values are printed as
hexadecimal.
‘cpu=...’ allows to enforce a particular ISA when disassembling instructions,
overriding the ‘-m’ value or whatever is in the ELF file. This might be use-
ful to select ARC EM or HS ISA, because architecture is same for those and
disassembler relies on private ELF header data to decide if code is for EM or
HS. This option might be specified multiple times - only the latest value will
be used. Valid values are same as for the assembler ‘-mcpu=...’ option.
If the target is an ARM architecture then this switch can be used to select which
register name set is used during disassembler. Specifying ‘-M reg-names-std’
(the default) will select the register names as used in ARM’s instruction set
documentation, but with register 13 called ’sp’, register 14 called ’lr’ and register
15 called ’pc’. Specifying ‘-M reg-names-apcs’ will select the name set used by
the ARM Procedure Call Standard, whilst specifying ‘-M reg-names-raw’ will
just use ‘r’ followed by the register number.
There are also two variants on the APCS register naming scheme enabled
by ‘-M reg-names-atpcs’ and ‘-M reg-names-special-atpcs’ which use the
ARM/Thumb Procedure Call Standard naming conventions. (Either with the
normal register names or the special register names).
This option can also be used for ARM architectures to force the disassem-
bler to interpret all instructions as Thumb instructions by using the switch
‘--disassembler-options=force-thumb’. This can be useful when attempt-
ing to disassemble thumb code produced by other compilers.
For the x86, some of the options duplicate functions of the ‘-m’ switch, but allow
finer grained control. Multiple selections from the following may be specified
as a comma separated string.
x86-64
i386
i8086 Select disassembly for the given architecture.
intel
att Select between intel syntax mode and AT&T syntax mode.
amd64
intel64 Select between AMD64 ISA and Intel64 ISA.
Chapter 5: objdump 35
intel-mnemonic
att-mnemonic
Select between intel mnemonic mode and AT&T mnemonic mode.
Note: intel-mnemonic implies intel and att-mnemonic implies
att.
addr64
addr32
addr16
data32
data16 Specify the default address size and operand size. These four op-
tions will be overridden if x86-64, i386 or i8086 appear later in
the option string.
suffix When in AT&T mode, instructs the disassembler to print a
mnemonic suffix even when the suffix could be inferred by the
operands.
For PowerPC, the ‘-M’ argument ‘raw’ selects disasssembly of hardware insns
rather than aliases. For example, you will see rlwinm rather than clrlwi,
and addi rather than li. All of the ‘-m’ arguments for gas that select
a CPU are supported. These are: ‘403’, ‘405’, ‘440’, ‘464’, ‘476’, ‘601’,
‘603’, ‘604’, ‘620’, ‘7400’, ‘7410’, ‘7450’, ‘7455’, ‘750cl’, ‘821’, ‘850’, ‘860’,
‘a2’, ‘booke’, ‘booke32’, ‘cell’, ‘com’, ‘e200z4’, ‘e300’, ‘e500’, ‘e500mc’,
‘e500mc64’, ‘e500x2’, ‘e5500’, ‘e6500’, ‘efs’, ‘power4’, ‘power5’, ‘power6’,
‘power7’, ‘power8’, ‘power9’, ‘ppc’, ‘ppc32’, ‘ppc64’, ‘ppc64bridge’, ‘ppcps’,
‘pwr’, ‘pwr2’, ‘pwr4’, ‘pwr5’, ‘pwr5x’, ‘pwr6’, ‘pwr7’, ‘pwr8’, ‘pwr9’, ‘pwrx’,
‘titan’, and ‘vle’. ‘32’ and ‘64’ modify the default or a prior CPU selection,
disabling and enabling 64-bit insns respectively. In addition, ‘altivec’, ‘any’,
‘htm’, ‘vsx’, and ‘spe’ add capabilities to a previous or later CPU selection.
‘any’ will disassemble any opcode known to binutils, but in cases where an
opcode has two different meanings or different arguments, you may not see the
disassembly you expect. If you disassemble without giving a CPU selection, a
default will be chosen from information gleaned by BFD from the object files
headers, but the result again may not be as you expect.
For MIPS, this option controls the printing of instruction mnemonic names
and register names in disassembled instructions. Multiple selections from the
following may be specified as a comma separated string, and invalid options are
ignored:
no-aliases
Print the ’raw’ instruction mnemonic instead of some pseudo in-
struction mnemonic. I.e., print ’daddu’ or ’or’ instead of ’move’,
’sll’ instead of ’nop’, etc.
msa Disassemble MSA instructions.
virt Disassemble the virtualization ASE instructions.
xpa Disassemble the eXtended Physical Address (XPA) ASE instruc-
tions.
Chapter 5: objdump 36
gpr-names=ABI
Print GPR (general-purpose register) names as appropriate for the
specified ABI. By default, GPR names are selected according to
the ABI of the binary being disassembled.
fpr-names=ABI
Print FPR (floating-point register) names as appropriate for the
specified ABI. By default, FPR numbers are printed rather than
names.
cp0-names=ARCH
Print CP0 (system control coprocessor; coprocessor 0) register
names as appropriate for the CPU or architecture specified by
ARCH . By default, CP0 register names are selected according to
the architecture and CPU of the binary being disassembled.
hwr-names=ARCH
Print HWR (hardware register, used by the rdhwr instruction)
names as appropriate for the CPU or architecture specified by
ARCH . By default, HWR names are selected according to the ar-
chitecture and CPU of the binary being disassembled.
reg-names=ABI
Print GPR and FPR names as appropriate for the selected ABI.
reg-names=ARCH
Print CPU-specific register names (CP0 register and HWR names)
as appropriate for the selected CPU or architecture.
For any of the options listed above, ABI or ARCH may be specified as ‘numeric’
to have numbers printed rather than names, for the selected types of registers.
You can list the available values of ABI and ARCH using the ‘--help’ option.
For VAX, you can specify function entry addresses with ‘-M entry:0xf00ba’.
You can use this multiple times to properly disassemble VAX binary files that
don’t contain symbol tables (like ROM dumps). In these cases, the function
entry mask would otherwise be decoded as VAX instructions, which would
probably lead the rest of the function being wrongly disassembled.
-p
--private-headers
Print information that is specific to the object file format. The exact informa-
tion printed depends upon the object file format. For some object file formats,
no additional information is printed.
-P options
--private=options
Print information that is specific to the object file format. The argument op-
tions is a comma separated list that depends on the format (the lists of options
is displayed with the help).
For XCOFF, the available options are:
header
Chapter 5: objdump 37
aout
sections
syms
relocs
lineno,
loader
except
typchk
traceback
toc
ldinfo
Not all object formats support this option. In particular the ELF format does
not use it.
-r
--reloc Print the relocation entries of the file. If used with ‘-d’ or ‘-D’, the relocations
are printed interspersed with the disassembly.
-R
--dynamic-reloc
Print the dynamic relocation entries of the file. This is only meaningful for
dynamic objects, such as certain types of shared libraries. As for ‘-r’, if used
with ‘-d’ or ‘-D’, the relocations are printed interspersed with the disassembly.
-s
--full-contents
Display the full contents of any sections requested. By default all non-empty
sections are displayed.
-S
--source Display source code intermixed with disassembly, if possible. Implies ‘-d’.
--prefix=prefix
Specify prefix to add to the absolute paths when used with ‘-S’.
--prefix-strip=level
Indicate how many initial directory names to strip off the hardwired absolute
paths. It has no effect without ‘--prefix=’prefix.
--show-raw-insn
When disassembling instructions, print the instruction in hex as well as in
symbolic form. This is the default except when ‘--prefix-addresses’ is used.
--no-show-raw-insn
When disassembling instructions, do not print the instruction bytes. This is
the default when ‘--prefix-addresses’ is used.
Chapter 5: objdump 38
--insn-width=width
Display width bytes on a single line when disassembling instructions.
-W[lLiaprmfFsoRtUuTgAckK]
--dwarf[=rawline,=decodedline,=info,=abbrev,=pubnames,=aranges,=macro,=frames,=frames-interp
info,=trace_abbrev,=trace_aranges,=gdb_index,=addr,=cu_
index,=links,=follow-links]
Displays the contents of the DWARF debug sections in the file, if any are
present. Compressed debug sections are automatically decompressed (tem-
porarily) before they are displayed. If one or more of the optional letters or
words follows the switch then only those type(s) of data will be dumped. The
letters and words refer to the following information:
a
=abbrev Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_abbrev’ section.
A
=addr Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_addr’ section.
c
=cu_index
Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_cu_index’ and/or
‘.debug_tu_index’ sections.
f
=frames Display the raw contents of a ‘.debug_frame’ section.
F
=frame-interp
Display the interpreted contents of a ‘.debug_frame’ section.
g
=gdb_index
Displays the contents of the ‘.gdb_index’ and/or ‘.debug_names’
sections.
i
=info Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_info’ section. Note: the
output from this option can also be restricted by the use of the
‘--dwarf-depth’ and ‘--dwarf-start’ options.
k
=links Displays the contents of the ‘.gnu_debuglink’ and/or
‘.gnu_debugaltlink’ sections. Also displays the link to a
separate dwarf object file (dwo), if one is specified by the
DW AT GNU dwo name or DW AT dwo name attributes in the
‘.debug_info’ section.
K
=follow-links
Display the contents of any selected debug sections that are found
in a linked, separate debug info file. This can result in multiple
Chapter 5: objdump 39
versions of the same debug section being displayed if both the main
file and the separate debug info file contain sections with the same
name.
In addition, when displaying DWARF attributes, if a form is found
that references the separate debug info file, then the referenced
contents will also be displayed.
l
=rawline Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_line’ section in a raw format.
L
=decodedline
Displays the interpreted contents of the ‘.debug_line’ section.
m
=macro Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_macro’ and/or
‘.debug_macinfo’ sections.
o
=loc Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_loc’ and/or
‘.debug_loclists’ sections.
p
=pubnames
Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_pubnames’ and/or
‘.debug_gnu_pubnames’ sections.
r
=aranges Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_aranges’ section.
R
=Ranges Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_ranges’ and/or
‘.debug_rnglists’ sections.
s
=str Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_str’, ‘.debug_line_str’
and/or ‘.debug_str_offsets’ sections.
t
=pubtype Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_pubtypes’ and/or
‘.debug_gnu_pubtypes’ sections.
T
=trace_aranges
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_aranges’ section.
u
=trace_abbrev
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_abbrev’ section.
U
=trace_info
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_info’ section.
Chapter 5: objdump 40
-T
--dynamic-syms
Print the dynamic symbol table entries of the file. This is only meaningful for
dynamic objects, such as certain types of shared libraries. This is similar to the
information provided by the ‘nm’ program when given the ‘-D’ (‘--dynamic’)
option.
The output format is similar to that produced by the ‘--syms’ option, except
that an extra field is inserted before the symbol’s name, giving the version
information associated with the symbol. If the version is the default version to
be used when resolving unversioned references to the symbol then it’s displayed
as is, otherwise it’s put into parentheses.
--special-syms
When displaying symbols include those which the target considers to be special
in some way and which would not normally be of interest to the user.
-V
--version
Print the version number of objdump and exit.
-x
--all-headers
Display all available header information, including the symbol table and re-
location entries. Using ‘-x’ is equivalent to specifying all of ‘-a -f -h -p -r
-t’.
-w
--wide Format some lines for output devices that have more than 80 columns. Also do
not truncate symbol names when they are displayed.
-z
--disassemble-zeroes
Normally the disassembly output will skip blocks of zeroes. This option directs
the disassembler to disassemble those blocks, just like any other data.
Chapter 6: ranlib 43
6 ranlib
ranlib [‘--plugin’ name ] [‘-DhHvVt’] archive
ranlib generates an index to the contents of an archive and stores it in the archive. The
index lists each symbol defined by a member of an archive that is a relocatable object file.
You may use ‘nm -s’ or ‘nm --print-armap’ to list this index.
An archive with such an index speeds up linking to the library and allows routines in
the library to call each other without regard to their placement in the archive.
The gnu ranlib program is another form of gnu ar; running ranlib is completely
equivalent to executing ‘ar -s’. See Chapter 1 [ar], page 2.
-h
-H
--help Show usage information for ranlib.
-v
-V
--version
Show the version number of ranlib.
-D Operate in deterministic mode. The symbol map archive member’s header will
show zero for the UID, GID, and timestamp. When this option is used, multiple
runs will produce identical output files.
If ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’, then
this mode is on by default. It can be disabled with the ‘-U’ option, described
below.
-t Update the timestamp of the symbol map of an archive.
-U Do not operate in deterministic mode. This is the inverse of the ‘-D’ option,
above: the archive index will get actual UID, GID, timestamp, and file mode
values.
If ‘binutils’ was configured without ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’,
then this mode is on by default.
Chapter 7: size 44
7 size
size [‘-A’|‘-B’|‘--format=’compatibility ]
[‘--help’]
[‘-d’|‘-o’|‘-x’|‘--radix=’number ]
[‘--common’]
[‘-t’|‘--totals’]
[‘--target=’bfdname ] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
[objfile ...]
The gnu size utility lists the section sizes—and the total size—for each of the object
or archive files objfile in its argument list. By default, one line of output is generated for
each object file or each module in an archive.
objfile . . . are the object files to be examined. If none are specified, the file a.out will
be used.
The command line options have the following meanings:
-A
-B
--format=compatibility
Using one of these options, you can choose whether the output from gnu size
resembles output from System V size (using ‘-A’, or ‘--format=sysv’), or
Berkeley size (using ‘-B’, or ‘--format=berkeley’). The default is the one-
line format similar to Berkeley’s.
Here is an example of the Berkeley (default) format of output from size:
$ size --format=Berkeley ranlib size
text data bss dec hex filename
294880 81920 11592 388392 5ed28 ranlib
294880 81920 11888 388688 5ee50 size
This is the same data, but displayed closer to System V conventions:
$ size --format=SysV ranlib size
ranlib :
section size addr
.text 294880 8192
.data 81920 303104
.bss 11592 385024
Total 388392
size :
section size addr
.text 294880 8192
.data 81920 303104
.bss 11888 385024
Total 388688
8 strings
strings [‘-afovV’] [‘-’min-len ]
[‘-n’ min-len ] [‘--bytes=’min-len ]
[‘-t’ radix ] [‘--radix=’radix ]
[‘-e’ encoding ] [‘--encoding=’encoding ]
[‘-’] [‘--all’] [‘--print-file-name’]
[‘-T’ bfdname ] [‘--target=’bfdname ]
[‘-w’] [‘--include-all-whitespace’]
[‘-s’] [‘--output-separator’sep_string ]
[‘--help’] [‘--version’] file ...
For each file given, gnu strings prints the printable character sequences that are at
least 4 characters long (or the number given with the options below) and are followed by
an unprintable character.
Depending upon how the strings program was configured it will default to either dis-
playing all the printable sequences that it can find in each file, or only those sequences that
are in loadable, initialized data sections. If the file type in unrecognizable, or if strings is
reading from stdin then it will always display all of the printable sequences that it can find.
For backwards compatibility any file that occurs after a command line option of just ‘-’
will also be scanned in full, regardless of the presence of any ‘-d’ option.
strings is mainly useful for determining the contents of non-text files.
-a
--all
- Scan the whole file, regardless of what sections it contains or whether those
sections are loaded or initialized. Normally this is the default behaviour, but
strings can be configured so that the ‘-d’ is the default instead.
The ‘-’ option is position dependent and forces strings to perform full scans of
any file that is mentioned after the ‘-’ on the command line, even if the ‘-d’
option has been specified.
-d
--data Only print strings from initialized, loaded data sections in the file. This may
reduce the amount of garbage in the output, but it also exposes the strings
program to any security flaws that may be present in the BFD library used
to scan and load sections. Strings can be configured so that this option is the
default behaviour. In such cases the ‘-a’ option can be used to avoid using the
BFD library and instead just print all of the strings found in the file.
-f
--print-file-name
Print the name of the file before each string.
--help Print a summary of the program usage on the standard output and exit.
-min-len
-n min-len
--bytes=min-len
Print sequences of characters that are at least min-len characters long, instead
of the default 4.
Chapter 8: strings 47
-o Like ‘-t o’. Some other versions of strings have ‘-o’ act like ‘-t d’ instead.
Since we can not be compatible with both ways, we simply chose one.
-t radix
--radix=radix
Print the offset within the file before each string. The single character argument
specifies the radix of the offset—‘o’ for octal, ‘x’ for hexadecimal, or ‘d’ for
decimal.
-e encoding
--encoding=encoding
Select the character encoding of the strings that are to be found. Possible
values for encoding are: ‘s’ = single-7-bit-byte characters (ASCII, ISO 8859,
etc., default), ‘S’ = single-8-bit-byte characters, ‘b’ = 16-bit bigendian, ‘l’ =
16-bit littleendian, ‘B’ = 32-bit bigendian, ‘L’ = 32-bit littleendian. Useful
for finding wide character strings. (‘l’ and ‘b’ apply to, for example, Unicode
UTF-16/UCS-2 encodings).
-T bfdname
--target=bfdname
Specify an object code format other than your system’s default format. See
Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-v
-V
--version
Print the program version number on the standard output and exit.
-w
--include-all-whitespace
By default tab and space characters are included in the strings that are dis-
played, but other whitespace characters, such a newlines and carriage returns,
are not. The ‘-w’ option changes this so that all whitespace characters are
considered to be part of a string.
-s
--output-separator
By default, output strings are delimited by a new-line. This option allows you
to supply any string to be used as the output record separator. Useful with
–include-all-whitespace where strings may contain new-lines internally.
Chapter 9: strip 48
9 strip
strip [‘-F’ bfdname |‘--target=’bfdname ]
[‘-I’ bfdname |‘--input-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-O’ bfdname |‘--output-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-s’|‘--strip-all’]
[‘-S’|‘-g’|‘-d’|‘--strip-debug’]
[‘--strip-dwo’]
[‘-K’ symbolname |‘--keep-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-M’|‘--merge-notes’][‘--no-merge-notes’]
[‘-N’ symbolname |‘--strip-symbol=’symbolname ]
[‘-w’|‘--wildcard’]
[‘-x’|‘--discard-all’] [‘-X’ |‘--discard-locals’]
[‘-R’ sectionname |‘--remove-section=’sectionname ]
[‘--remove-relocations=’sectionpattern ]
[‘-o’ file ] [‘-p’|‘--preserve-dates’]
[‘-D’|‘--enable-deterministic-archives’]
[‘-U’|‘--disable-deterministic-archives’]
[‘--keep-file-symbols’]
[‘--only-keep-debug’]
[‘-v’ |‘--verbose’] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
[‘--help’] [‘--info’]
objfile ...
gnu strip discards all symbols from object files objfile. The list of object files may
include archives. At least one object file must be given.
strip modifies the files named in its argument, rather than writing modified copies
under different names.
-F bfdname
--target=bfdname
Treat the original objfile as a file with the object code format bfdname, and
rewrite it in the same format. See Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for
more information.
--help Show a summary of the options to strip and exit.
--info Display a list showing all architectures and object formats available.
-I bfdname
--input-target=bfdname
Treat the original objfile as a file with the object code format bfdname. See
Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-O bfdname
--output-target=bfdname
Replace objfile with a file in the output format bfdname. See Section 19.1
[Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-R sectionname
--remove-section=sectionname
Remove any section named sectionname from the output file, in addition to
whatever sections would otherwise be removed. This option may be given more
than once. Note that using this option inappropriately may make the output file
unusable. The wildcard character ‘*’ may be given at the end of sectionname.
If so, then any section starting with sectionname will be removed.
Chapter 9: strip 49
If the first character of sectionpattern is the exclamation point (!) then match-
ing sections will not be removed even if an earlier use of ‘--remove-section’
on the same command line would otherwise remove it. For example:
--remove-section=.text.* --remove-section=!.text.foo
will remove all sections matching the pattern ’.text.*’, but will not remove the
section ’.text.foo’.
--remove-relocations=sectionpattern
Remove relocations from the output file for any section matching sectionpat-
tern. This option may be given more than once. Note that using this option
inappropriately may make the output file unusable. Wildcard characters are
accepted in sectionpattern. For example:
--remove-relocations=.text.*
will remove the relocations for all sections matching the patter ’.text.*’.
If the first character of sectionpattern is the exclamation point (!) then match-
ing sections will not have their relocation removed even if an earlier use of
‘--remove-relocations’ on the same command line would otherwise cause
the relocations to be removed. For example:
--remove-relocations=.text.* --remove-relocations=!.text.foo
will remove all relocations for sections matching the pattern ’.text.*’, but will
not remove relocations for the section ’.text.foo’.
-s
--strip-all
Remove all symbols.
-g
-S
-d
--strip-debug
Remove debugging symbols only.
--strip-dwo
Remove the contents of all DWARF .dwo sections, leaving the remaining de-
bugging sections and all symbols intact. See the description of this option in
the objcopy section for more information.
--strip-unneeded
Remove all symbols that are not needed for relocation processing.
-K symbolname
--keep-symbol=symbolname
When stripping symbols, keep symbol symbolname even if it would normally
be stripped. This option may be given more than once.
-M
--merge-notes
--no-merge-notes
For ELF files, attempt (or do not attempt) to reduce the size of any SHT NOTE
type sections by removing duplicate notes. The default is to attempt this re-
duction.
Chapter 9: strip 50
-N symbolname
--strip-symbol=symbolname
Remove symbol symbolname from the source file. This option may be given
more than once, and may be combined with strip options other than ‘-K’.
-o file Put the stripped output in file, rather than replacing the existing file. When
this argument is used, only one objfile argument may be specified.
-p
--preserve-dates
Preserve the access and modification dates of the file.
-D
--enable-deterministic-archives
Operate in deterministic mode. When copying archive members and writing
the archive index, use zero for UIDs, GIDs, timestamps, and use consistent file
modes for all files.
If ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’, then
this mode is on by default. It can be disabled with the ‘-U’ option, below.
-U
--disable-deterministic-archives
Do not operate in deterministic mode. This is the inverse of the ‘-D’ option,
above: when copying archive members and writing the archive index, use their
actual UID, GID, timestamp, and file mode values.
This is the default unless ‘binutils’ was configured with ‘--enable-deterministic-archives’.
-w
--wildcard
Permit regular expressions in symbolnames used in other command line options.
The question mark (?), asterisk (*), backslash (\) and square brackets ([])
operators can be used anywhere in the symbol name. If the first character of
the symbol name is the exclamation point (!) then the sense of the switch is
reversed for that symbol. For example:
-w -K !foo -K fo*
would cause strip to only keep symbols that start with the letters “fo”, but to
discard the symbol “foo”.
-x
--discard-all
Remove non-global symbols.
-X
--discard-locals
Remove compiler-generated local symbols. (These usually start with ‘L’ or ‘.’.)
--keep-file-symbols
When stripping a file, perhaps with ‘--strip-debug’ or ‘--strip-unneeded’,
retain any symbols specifying source file names, which would otherwise get
stripped.
Chapter 9: strip 51
--only-keep-debug
Strip a file, emptying the contents of any sections that would not be stripped
by ‘--strip-debug’ and leaving the debugging sections intact. In ELF files,
this preserves all the note sections in the output as well.
Note - the section headers of the stripped sections are preserved, including their
sizes, but the contents of the section are discarded. The section headers are
preserved so that other tools can match up the debuginfo file with the real
executable, even if that executable has been relocated to a different address
space.
The intention is that this option will be used in conjunction with
‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ to create a two part executable. One a stripped
binary which will occupy less space in RAM and in a distribution and the
second a debugging information file which is only needed if debugging abilities
are required. The suggested procedure to create these files is as follows:
1. Link the executable as normal. Assuming that is is called foo then...
2. Run objcopy --only-keep-debug foo foo.dbg to create a file containing
the debugging info.
3. Run objcopy --strip-debug foo to create a stripped executable.
4. Run objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.dbg foo to add a link to the
debugging info into the stripped executable.
Note—the choice of .dbg as an extension for the debug info file is arbitrary.
Also the --only-keep-debug step is optional. You could instead do this:
1. Link the executable as normal.
2. Copy foo to foo.full
3. Run strip --strip-debug foo
4. Run objcopy --add-gnu-debuglink=foo.full foo
i.e., the file pointed to by the ‘--add-gnu-debuglink’ can be the full executable.
It does not have to be a file created by the ‘--only-keep-debug’ switch.
Note—this switch is only intended for use on fully linked files. It does not make
sense to use it on object files where the debugging information may be incom-
plete. Besides the gnu debuglink feature currently only supports the presence
of one filename containing debugging information, not multiple filenames on a
one-per-object-file basis.
-V
--version
Show the version number for strip.
-v
--verbose
Verbose output: list all object files modified. In the case of archives, ‘strip
-v’ lists all members of the archive.
Chapter 10: c++filt 52
10 c++filt
c++filt [‘-_’|‘--strip-underscore’]
[‘-n’|‘--no-strip-underscore’]
[‘-p’|‘--no-params’]
[‘-t’|‘--types’]
[‘-i’|‘--no-verbose’]
[‘-s’ format |‘--format=’format ]
[‘--help’] [‘--version’] [symbol ...]
The C++ and Java languages provide function overloading, which means that you can
write many functions with the same name, providing that each function takes parameters of
different types. In order to be able to distinguish these similarly named functions C++ and
Java encode them into a low-level assembler name which uniquely identifies each different
version. This process is known as mangling. The c++filt1 program does the inverse
mapping: it decodes (demangles) low-level names into user-level names so that they can be
read.
Every alphanumeric word (consisting of letters, digits, underscores, dollars, or periods)
seen in the input is a potential mangled name. If the name decodes into a C++ name, the
C++ name replaces the low-level name in the output, otherwise the original word is output.
In this way you can pass an entire assembler source file, containing mangled names, through
c++filt and see the same source file containing demangled names.
You can also use c++filt to decipher individual symbols by passing them on the com-
mand line:
c++filt symbol
If no symbol arguments are given, c++filt reads symbol names from the standard
input instead. All the results are printed on the standard output. The difference between
reading names from the command line versus reading names from the standard input is
that command line arguments are expected to be just mangled names and no checking is
performed to separate them from surrounding text. Thus for example:
c++filt -n _Z1fv
will work and demangle the name to “f()” whereas:
c++filt -n _Z1fv,
will not work. (Note the extra comma at the end of the mangled name which makes it
invalid). This command however will work:
echo _Z1fv, | c++filt -n
and will display “f(),”, i.e., the demangled name followed by a trailing comma. This
behaviour is because when the names are read from the standard input it is expected that
they might be part of an assembler source file where there might be extra, extraneous
characters trailing after a mangled name. For example:
.type _Z1fv, @function
-_
--strip-underscore
On some systems, both the C and C++ compilers put an underscore in front
of every name. For example, the C name foo gets the low-level name _foo.
1
MS-DOS does not allow + characters in file names, so on MS-DOS this program is named CXXFILT.
Chapter 10: c++filt 53
This option removes the initial underscore. Whether c++filt removes the
underscore by default is target dependent.
-n
--no-strip-underscore
Do not remove the initial underscore.
-p
--no-params
When demangling the name of a function, do not display the types of the
function’s parameters.
-t
--types Attempt to demangle types as well as function names. This is disabled by
default since mangled types are normally only used internally in the compiler,
and they can be confused with non-mangled names. For example, a function
called “a” treated as a mangled type name would be demangled to “signed
char”.
-i
--no-verbose
Do not include implementation details (if any) in the demangled output.
-s format
--format=format
c++filt can decode various methods of mangling, used by different compilers.
The argument to this option selects which method it uses:
auto Automatic selection based on executable (the default method)
gnu the one used by the gnu C++ compiler (g++)
lucid the one used by the Lucid compiler (lcc)
arm the one specified by the C++ Annotated Reference Manual
hp the one used by the HP compiler (aCC)
edg the one used by the EDG compiler
gnu-v3 the one used by the gnu C++ compiler (g++) with the V3 ABI.
java the one used by the gnu Java compiler (gcj)
gnat the one used by the gnu Ada compiler (GNAT).
--help Print a summary of the options to c++filt and exit.
--version
Print the version number of c++filt and exit.
Warning: c++filt is a new utility, and the details of its user interface are
subject to change in future releases. In particular, a command-line option may
be required in the future to decode a name passed as an argument on the
command line; in other words,
c++filt symbol
may in a future release become
c++filt option symbol
Chapter 11: addr2line 54
11 addr2line
addr2line [‘-a’|‘--addresses’]
[‘-b’ bfdname |‘--target=’bfdname ]
[‘-C’|‘--demangle’[=style ]]
[‘-e’ filename |‘--exe=’filename ]
[‘-f’|‘--functions’] [‘-s’|‘--basename’]
[‘-i’|‘--inlines’]
[‘-p’|‘--pretty-print’]
[‘-j’|‘--section=’name ]
[‘-H’|‘--help’] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
[addr addr ...]
addr2line translates addresses into file names and line numbers. Given an address in an
executable or an offset in a section of a relocatable object, it uses the debugging information
to figure out which file name and line number are associated with it.
The executable or relocatable object to use is specified with the ‘-e’ option. The default
is the file ‘a.out’. The section in the relocatable object to use is specified with the ‘-j’
option.
addr2line has two modes of operation.
In the first, hexadecimal addresses are specified on the command line, and addr2line
displays the file name and line number for each address.
In the second, addr2line reads hexadecimal addresses from standard input, and prints
the file name and line number for each address on standard output. In this mode, addr2line
may be used in a pipe to convert dynamically chosen addresses.
The format of the output is ‘FILENAME:LINENO’. By default each input address generates
one line of output.
Two options can generate additional lines before each ‘FILENAME:LINENO’ line (in that
order).
If the ‘-a’ option is used then a line with the input address is displayed.
If the ‘-f’ option is used, then a line with the ‘FUNCTIONNAME’ is displayed. This is the
name of the function containing the address.
One option can generate additional lines after the ‘FILENAME:LINENO’ line.
If the ‘-i’ option is used and the code at the given address is present there because of
inlining by the compiler then additional lines are displayed afterwards. One or two extra
lines (if the ‘-f’ option is used) are displayed for each inlined function.
Alternatively if the ‘-p’ option is used then each input address generates a single, long,
output line containing the address, the function name, the file name and the line number. If
the ‘-i’ option has also been used then any inlined functions will be displayed in the same
manner, but on separate lines, and prefixed by the text ‘(inlined by)’.
If the file name or function name can not be determined, addr2line will print two
question marks in their place. If the line number can not be determined, addr2line will
print 0.
The long and short forms of options, shown here as alternatives, are equivalent.
-a
--addresses
Display the address before the function name, file and line number information.
The address is printed with a ‘0x’ prefix to easily identify it.
Chapter 11: addr2line 55
-b bfdname
--target=bfdname
Specify that the object-code format for the object files is bfdname.
-C
--demangle[=style ]
Decode (demangle) low-level symbol names into user-level names. Besides re-
moving any initial underscore prepended by the system, this makes C++ func-
tion names readable. Different compilers have different mangling styles. The
optional demangling style argument can be used to choose an appropriate de-
mangling style for your compiler. See Chapter 10 [c++filt], page 52, for more
information on demangling.
-e filename
--exe=filename
Specify the name of the executable for which addresses should be translated.
The default file is ‘a.out’.
-f
--functions
Display function names as well as file and line number information.
-s
--basenames
Display only the base of each file name.
-i
--inlines
If the address belongs to a function that was inlined, the source information for
all enclosing scopes back to the first non-inlined function will also be printed.
For example, if main inlines callee1 which inlines callee2, and address is from
callee2, the source information for callee1 and main will also be printed.
-j
--section
Read offsets relative to the specified section instead of absolute addresses.
-p
--pretty-print
Make the output more human friendly: each location are printed on one line. If
option ‘-i’ is specified, lines for all enclosing scopes are prefixed with ‘(inlined
by)’.
Chapter 12: nlmconv 56
12 nlmconv
nlmconv converts a relocatable object file into a NetWare Loadable Module.
Warning: nlmconv is not always built as part of the binary utilities, since it is
only useful for NLM targets.
nlmconv [‘-I’ bfdname |‘--input-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-O’ bfdname |‘--output-target=’bfdname ]
[‘-T’ headerfile |‘--header-file=’headerfile ]
[‘-d’|‘--debug’] [‘-l’ linker |‘--linker=’linker ]
[‘-h’|‘--help’] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
infile outfile
nlmconv converts the relocatable ‘i386’ object file infile into the NetWare Loadable
Module outfile, optionally reading headerfile for NLM header information. For instructions
on writing the NLM command file language used in header files, see the ‘linkers’ section,
‘NLMLINK’ in particular, of the NLM Development and Tools Overview, which is part of the
NLM Software Developer’s Kit (“NLM SDK”), available from Novell, Inc. nlmconv uses
the gnu Binary File Descriptor library to read infile; see Section “BFD” in Using LD, for
more information.
nlmconv can perform a link step. In other words, you can list more than one object file
for input if you list them in the definitions file (rather than simply specifying one input file
on the command line). In this case, nlmconv calls the linker for you.
-I bfdname
--input-target=bfdname
Object format of the input file. nlmconv can usually determine the format of
a given file (so no default is necessary). See Section 19.1 [Target Selection],
page 79, for more information.
-O bfdname
--output-target=bfdname
Object format of the output file. nlmconv infers the output format based on
the input format, e.g. for a ‘i386’ input file the output format is ‘nlm32-i386’.
See Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79, for more information.
-T headerfile
--header-file=headerfile
Reads headerfile for NLM header information. For instructions on writing the
NLM command file language used in header files, see see the ‘linkers’ sec-
tion, of the NLM Development and Tools Overview, which is part of the NLM
Software Developer’s Kit, available from Novell, Inc.
-d
--debug Displays (on standard error) the linker command line used by nlmconv.
-l linker
--linker=linker
Use linker for any linking. linker can be an absolute or a relative pathname.
-h
--help Prints a usage summary.
Chapter 12: nlmconv 57
-V
--version
Prints the version number for nlmconv.
Chapter 13: windmc 58
13 windmc
windmc may be used to generator Windows message resources.
Warning: windmc is not always built as part of the binary utilities, since it is
only useful for Windows targets.
windmc [options] input-file
windmc reads message definitions from an input file (.mc) and translate them into a set
of output files. The output files may be of four kinds:
h A C header file containing the message definitions.
rc A resource file compilable by the windres tool.
bin One or more binary files containing the resource data for a specific message
language.
dbg A C include file that maps message id’s to their symbolic name.
The exact description of these different formats is available in documentation from Mi-
crosoft.
When windmc converts from the mc format to the bin format, rc, h, and optional dbg it
is acting like the Windows Message Compiler.
-a
--ascii_in
Specifies that the input file specified is ASCII. This is the default behaviour.
-A
--ascii_out
Specifies that messages in the output bin files should be in ASCII format.
-b
--binprefix
Specifies that bin filenames should have to be prefixed by the basename of the
source file.
-c
--customflag
Sets the customer bit in all message id’s.
-C codepage
--codepage_in codepage
Sets the default codepage to be used to convert input file to UTF16. The default
is ocdepage 1252.
-d
--decimal_values
Outputs the constants in the header file in decimal. Default is using hexadeci-
mal output.
-e ext
--extension ext
The extension for the header file. The default is .h extension.
Chapter 13: windmc 59
-F target
--target target
Specify the BFD format to use for a bin file as output. This is a BFD target
name; you can use the ‘--help’ option to see a list of supported targets. Nor-
mally windmc will use the default format, which is the first one listed by the
‘--help’ option. Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79.
-h path
--headerdir path
The target directory of the generated header file. The default is the current
directory.
-H
--help Displays a list of command line options and then exits.
-m characters
--maxlength characters
Instructs windmc to generate a warning if the length of any message exceeds
the number specified.
-n
--nullterminate
Terminate message text in bin files by zero. By default they are terminated by
CR/LF.
-o
--hresult_use
Not yet implemented. Instructs windmc to generate an OLE2 header file, using
HRESULT definitions. Status codes are used if the flag is not specified.
-O codepage
--codepage_out codepage
Sets the default codepage to be used to output text files. The default is ocdepage
1252.
-r path
--rcdir path
The target directory for the generated rc script and the generated bin files that
the resource compiler script includes. The default is the current directory.
-u
--unicode_in
Specifies that the input file is UTF16.
-U
--unicode_out
Specifies that messages in the output bin file should be in UTF16 format. This
is the default behaviour.
-v
--verbose
Enable verbose mode.
Chapter 13: windmc 60
-V
--version
Prints the version number for windmc.
-x path
--xdgb path
The path of the dbg C include file that maps message id’s to the symbolic name.
No such file is generated without specifying the switch.
Chapter 14: windres 61
14 windres
windres may be used to manipulate Windows resources.
Warning: windres is not always built as part of the binary utilities, since it is
only useful for Windows targets.
windres [options] [input-file] [output-file]
windres reads resources from an input file and copies them into an output file. Either
file may be in one of three formats:
rc A text format read by the Resource Compiler.
res A binary format generated by the Resource Compiler.
coff A COFF object or executable.
The exact description of these different formats is available in documentation from Mi-
crosoft.
When windres converts from the rc format to the res format, it is acting like the
Windows Resource Compiler. When windres converts from the res format to the coff
format, it is acting like the Windows CVTRES program.
When windres generates an rc file, the output is similar but not identical to the format
expected for the input. When an input rc file refers to an external filename, an output rc
file will instead include the file contents.
If the input or output format is not specified, windres will guess based on the file name,
or, for the input file, the file contents. A file with an extension of ‘.rc’ will be treated as
an rc file, a file with an extension of ‘.res’ will be treated as a res file, and a file with an
extension of ‘.o’ or ‘.exe’ will be treated as a coff file.
If no output file is specified, windres will print the resources in rc format to standard
output.
The normal use is for you to write an rc file, use windres to convert it to a COFF
object file, and then link the COFF file into your application. This will make the resources
described in the rc file available to Windows.
-i filename
--input filename
The name of the input file. If this option is not used, then windres will use
the first non-option argument as the input file name. If there are no non-option
arguments, then windres will read from standard input. windres can not read
a COFF file from standard input.
-o filename
--output filename
The name of the output file. If this option is not used, then windres will use
the first non-option argument, after any used for the input file name, as the
output file name. If there is no non-option argument, then windres will write
to standard output. windres can not write a COFF file to standard output.
Note, for compatibility with rc the option ‘-fo’ is also accepted, but its use is
not recommended.
Chapter 14: windres 62
-J format
--input-format format
The input format to read. format may be ‘res’, ‘rc’, or ‘coff’. If no input
format is specified, windres will guess, as described above.
-O format
--output-format format
The output format to generate. format may be ‘res’, ‘rc’, or ‘coff’. If no
output format is specified, windres will guess, as described above.
-F target
--target target
Specify the BFD format to use for a COFF file as input or output. This is a
BFD target name; you can use the ‘--help’ option to see a list of supported
targets. Normally windres will use the default format, which is the first one
listed by the ‘--help’ option. Section 19.1 [Target Selection], page 79.
--preprocessor program
When windres reads an rc file, it runs it through the C preprocessor first. This
option may be used to specify the preprocessor to use, including any leading
arguments. The default preprocessor argument is gcc -E -xc-header -DRC_
INVOKED.
--preprocessor-arg option
When windres reads an rc file, it runs it through the C preprocessor first.
This option may be used to specify additional text to be passed to preprocessor
on its command line. This option can be used multiple times to add multiple
options to the preprocessor command line.
-I directory
--include-dir directory
Specify an include directory to use when reading an rc file. windres will
pass this to the preprocessor as an ‘-I’ option. windres will also search this
directory when looking for files named in the rc file. If the argument passed to
this command matches any of the supported formats (as described in the ‘-J’
option), it will issue a deprecation warning, and behave just like the ‘-J’ option.
New programs should not use this behaviour. If a directory happens to match
a format, simple prefix it with ‘./’ to disable the backward compatibility.
-D target
--define sym [=val ]
Specify a ‘-D’ option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an rc file.
-U target
--undefine sym
Specify a ‘-U’ option to pass to the preprocessor when reading an rc file.
-r Ignored for compatibility with rc.
-v Enable verbose mode. This tells you what the preprocessor is if you didn’t
specify one.
-c val
Chapter 14: windres 63
--codepage val
Specify the default codepage to use when reading an rc file. val should be
a hexadecimal prefixed by ‘0x’ or decimal codepage code. The valid range is
from zero up to 0xffff, but the validity of the codepage is host and configuration
dependent.
-l val
--language val
Specify the default language to use when reading an rc file. val should be a
hexadecimal language code. The low eight bits are the language, and the high
eight bits are the sublanguage.
--use-temp-file
Use a temporary file to instead of using popen to read the output of the pre-
processor. Use this option if the popen implementation is buggy on the host
(eg., certain non-English language versions of Windows 95 and Windows 98 are
known to have buggy popen where the output will instead go the console).
--no-use-temp-file
Use popen, not a temporary file, to read the output of the preprocessor. This
is the default behaviour.
-h
--help Prints a usage summary.
-V
--version
Prints the version number for windres.
--yydebug
If windres is compiled with YYDEBUG defined as 1, this will turn on parser
debugging.
Chapter 15: dlltool 64
15 dlltool
dlltool is used to create the files needed to create dynamic link libraries (DLLs) on systems
which understand PE format image files such as Windows. A DLL contains an export
table which contains information that the runtime loader needs to resolve references from
a referencing program.
The export table is generated by this program by reading in a ‘.def’ file or scanning the
‘.a’ and ‘.o’ files which will be in the DLL. A ‘.o’ file can contain information in special
‘.drectve’ sections with export information.
Note: dlltool is not always built as part of the binary utilities, since it is only
useful for those targets which support DLLs.
dlltool [‘-d’|‘--input-def’ def-file-name ]
[‘-b’|‘--base-file’ base-file-name ]
[‘-e’|‘--output-exp’ exports-file-name ]
[‘-z’|‘--output-def’ def-file-name ]
[‘-l’|‘--output-lib’ library-file-name ]
[‘-y’|‘--output-delaylib’ library-file-name ]
[‘--export-all-symbols’] [‘--no-export-all-symbols’]
[‘--exclude-symbols’ list ]
[‘--no-default-excludes’]
[‘-S’|‘--as’ path-to-assembler ] [‘-f’|‘--as-flags’ options ]
[‘-D’|‘--dllname’ name ] [‘-m’|‘--machine’ machine ]
[‘-a’|‘--add-indirect’]
[‘-U’|‘--add-underscore’] [‘--add-stdcall-underscore’]
[‘-k’|‘--kill-at’] [‘-A’|‘--add-stdcall-alias’]
[‘-p’|‘--ext-prefix-alias’ prefix ]
[‘-x’|‘--no-idata4’] [‘-c’|‘--no-idata5’]
[‘--use-nul-prefixed-import-tables’]
[‘-I’|‘--identify’ library-file-name ] [‘--identify-strict’]
[‘-i’|‘--interwork’]
[‘-n’|‘--nodelete’] [‘-t’|‘--temp-prefix’ prefix ]
[‘-v’|‘--verbose’]
[‘-h’|‘--help’] [‘-V’|‘--version’]
[‘--no-leading-underscore’] [‘--leading-underscore’]
[object-file ...]
dlltool reads its inputs, which can come from the ‘-d’ and ‘-b’ options as well as object
files specified on the command line. It then processes these inputs and if the ‘-e’ option
has been specified it creates a exports file. If the ‘-l’ option has been specified it creates a
library file and if the ‘-z’ option has been specified it creates a def file. Any or all of the
‘-e’, ‘-l’ and ‘-z’ options can be present in one invocation of dlltool.
When creating a DLL, along with the source for the DLL, it is necessary to have three
other files. dlltool can help with the creation of these files.
The first file is a ‘.def’ file which specifies which functions are exported from the DLL,
which functions the DLL imports, and so on. This is a text file and can be created by hand,
or dlltool can be used to create it using the ‘-z’ option. In this case dlltool will scan
the object files specified on its command line looking for those functions which have been
specially marked as being exported and put entries for them in the ‘.def’ file it creates.
In order to mark a function as being exported from a DLL, it needs to have an
‘-export:<name_of_function>’ entry in the ‘.drectve’ section of the object file. This
can be done in C by using the asm() operator:
Chapter 15: dlltool 65
-l filename
--output-lib filename
Specifies the name of the library file to be created by dlltool.
-y filename
--output-delaylib filename
Specifies the name of the delay-import library file to be created by dlltool.
--export-all-symbols
Treat all global and weak defined symbols found in the input object files as
symbols to be exported. There is a small list of symbols which are not exported
by default; see the ‘--no-default-excludes’ option. You may add to the list
of symbols to not export by using the ‘--exclude-symbols’ option.
--no-export-all-symbols
Only export symbols explicitly listed in an input ‘.def’ file or in ‘.drectve’
sections in the input object files. This is the default behaviour. The ‘.drectve’
sections are created by ‘dllexport’ attributes in the source code.
--exclude-symbols list
Do not export the symbols in list. This is a list of symbol names separated by
comma or colon characters. The symbol names should not contain a leading
underscore. This is only meaningful when ‘--export-all-symbols’ is used.
--no-default-excludes
When ‘--export-all-symbols’ is used, it will by default avoid exporting
certain special symbols. The current list of symbols to avoid exporting
is ‘DllMain@12’, ‘DllEntryPoint@0’, ‘impure_ptr’. You may use the
‘--no-default-excludes’ option to go ahead and export these special
symbols. This is only meaningful when ‘--export-all-symbols’ is used.
-S path
--as path
Specifies the path, including the filename, of the assembler to be used to create
the exports file.
-f options
--as-flags options
Specifies any specific command line options to be passed to the assembler when
building the exports file. This option will work even if the ‘-S’ option is not
used. This option only takes one argument, and if it occurs more than once
on the command line, then later occurrences will override earlier occurrences.
So if it is necessary to pass multiple options to the assembler they should be
enclosed in double quotes.
-D name
--dll-name name
Specifies the name to be stored in the ‘.def’ file as the name of the DLL when
the ‘-e’ option is used. If this option is not present, then the filename given to
the ‘-e’ option will be used as the name of the DLL.
Chapter 15: dlltool 67
-m machine
-machine machine
Specifies the type of machine for which the library file should be built. dlltool
has a built in default type, depending upon how it was created, but this option
can be used to override that. This is normally only useful when creating DLLs
for an ARM processor, when the contents of the DLL are actually encode using
Thumb instructions.
-a
--add-indirect
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports file it should add a section
which allows the exported functions to be referenced without using the import
library. Whatever the hell that means!
-U
--add-underscore
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports file it should prepend an
underscore to the names of all exported symbols.
--no-leading-underscore
--leading-underscore
Specifies whether standard symbol should be forced to be prefixed, or not.
--add-stdcall-underscore
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports file it should prepend an
underscore to the names of exported stdcall functions. Variable names and non-
stdcall function names are not modified. This option is useful when creating
GNU-compatible import libs for third party DLLs that were built with MS-
Windows tools.
-k
--kill-at
Specifies that ‘@<number>’ suffixes should be omitted from the names of stdcall
functions that will be imported from the DLL. This is useful when creating an
import library for a DLL which exports stdcall functions but without the usual
‘@<number>’ symbol name suffix.
This does not change the naming of symbols provided by the import library
to programs linked against it, but only the entries in the import table (ie the
.idata section).
-A
--add-stdcall-alias
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports file it should add aliases
for stdcall symbols without ‘@ <number>’ in addition to the symbols with ‘@
<number>’.
-p
--ext-prefix-alias prefix
Causes dlltool to create external aliases for all DLL imports with the specified
prefix. The aliases are created for both external and import symbols with no
leading underscore.
Chapter 15: dlltool 68
-x
--no-idata4
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports and library files it should
omit the .idata4 section. This is for compatibility with certain operating
systems.
--use-nul-prefixed-import-tables
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports and library files it should
prefix the .idata4 and .idata5 by zero an element. This emulates old gnu
import library generation of dlltool. By default this option is turned off.
-c
--no-idata5
Specifies that when dlltool is creating the exports and library files it should
omit the .idata5 section. This is for compatibility with certain operating
systems.
-I filename
--identify filename
Specifies that dlltool should inspect the import library indicated by filename
and report, on stdout, the name(s) of the associated DLL(s). This can be
performed in addition to any other operations indicated by the other options
and arguments. dlltool fails if the import library does not exist or is not
actually an import library. See also ‘--identify-strict’.
--identify-strict
Modifies the behavior of the ‘--identify’ option, such that an error is reported
if filename is associated with more than one DLL.
-i
--interwork
Specifies that dlltool should mark the objects in the library file and exports
file that it produces as supporting interworking between ARM and Thumb code.
-n
--nodelete
Makes dlltool preserve the temporary assembler files it used to create the ex-
ports file. If this option is repeated then dlltool will also preserve the temporary
object files it uses to create the library file.
-t prefix
--temp-prefix prefix
Makes dlltool use prefix when constructing the names of temporary assembler
and object files. By default, the temp file prefix is generated from the pid.
-v
--verbose
Make dlltool describe what it is doing.
-h
--help Displays a list of command line options and then exits.
Chapter 15: dlltool 69
-V
--version
Displays dlltool’s version number and then exits.
16 readelf
readelf [‘-a’|‘--all’]
[‘-h’|‘--file-header’]
[‘-l’|‘--program-headers’|‘--segments’]
[‘-S’|‘--section-headers’|‘--sections’]
[‘-g’|‘--section-groups’]
[‘-t’|‘--section-details’]
[‘-e’|‘--headers’]
[‘-s’|‘--syms’|‘--symbols’]
[‘--dyn-syms’]
[‘-n’|‘--notes’]
[‘-r’|‘--relocs’]
[‘-u’|‘--unwind’]
[‘-d’|‘--dynamic’]
[‘-V’|‘--version-info’]
[‘-A’|‘--arch-specific’]
[‘-D’|‘--use-dynamic’]
[‘-x’ <number or name>|‘--hex-dump=’<number or name>]
[‘-p’ <number or name>|‘--string-dump=’<number or name>]
[‘-R’ <number or name>|‘--relocated-dump=’<number or name>]
[‘-z’|‘--decompress’]
[‘-c’|‘--archive-index’]
[‘-w[lLiaprmfFsoRtUuTgAckK]’|
‘--debug-dump’[=rawline,=decodedline,=info,=abbrev,=pubnames,=aranges,=macro,=frames,=frames-
interp,=str,=loc,=Ranges,=pubtypes,=trace_info,=trace_abbrev,=trace_aranges,=gdb_index,=addr,=cu_index,=l
links]]
[‘--dwarf-depth=n ’]
[‘--dwarf-start=n ’]
[‘-I’|‘--histogram’]
[‘-v’|‘--version’]
[‘-W’|‘--wide’]
[‘-H’|‘--help’]
elffile ...
readelf displays information about one or more ELF format object files. The options
control what particular information to display.
elffile . . . are the object files to be examined. 32-bit and 64-bit ELF files are supported,
as are archives containing ELF files.
This program performs a similar function to objdump but it goes into more detail and
it exists independently of the bfd library, so if there is a bug in bfd then readelf will not
be affected.
The long and short forms of options, shown here as alternatives, are equivalent. At least
one option besides ‘-v’ or ‘-H’ must be given.
-a
--all Equivalent to specifying ‘--file-header’, ‘--program-headers’,
‘--sections’, ‘--symbols’, ‘--relocs’, ‘--dynamic’, ‘--notes’,
‘--version-info’, ‘--arch-specific’, ‘--unwind’, ‘--section-groups’ and
‘--histogram’.
Note - this option does not enable ‘--use-dynamic’ itself, so if that option is
not present on the command line then dynamic symbols and dynamic relocs
will not be displayed.
Chapter 16: readelf 71
-h
--file-header
Displays the information contained in the ELF header at the start of the file.
-l
--program-headers
--segments
Displays the information contained in the file’s segment headers, if it has any.
-S
--sections
--section-headers
Displays the information contained in the file’s section headers, if it has any.
-g
--section-groups
Displays the information contained in the file’s section groups, if it has any.
-t
--section-details
Displays the detailed section information. Implies ‘-S’.
-s
--symbols
--syms Displays the entries in symbol table section of the file, if it has one. If a symbol
has version information associated with it then this is displayed as well. The
version string is displayed as a suffix to the symbol name, preceeded by an @
character. For example ‘foo@VER_1’. If the version is the default version to be
used when resolving unversioned references to the symbol then it is displayed
as a suffix preceeded by two @ characters. For example ‘foo@@VER_2’.
--dyn-syms
Displays the entries in dynamic symbol table section of the file, if it has one.
The output format is the same as the format used by the ‘--syms’ option.
-e
--headers
Display all the headers in the file. Equivalent to ‘-h -l -S’.
-n
--notes Displays the contents of the NOTE segments and/or sections, if any.
-r
--relocs Displays the contents of the file’s relocation section, if it has one.
-u
--unwind Displays the contents of the file’s unwind section, if it has one. Only the unwind
sections for IA64 ELF files, as well as ARM unwind tables (.ARM.exidx /
.ARM.extab) are currently supported.
-d
--dynamic
Displays the contents of the file’s dynamic section, if it has one.
Chapter 16: readelf 72
-V
--version-info
Displays the contents of the version sections in the file, it they exist.
-A
--arch-specific
Displays architecture-specific information in the file, if there is any.
-D
--use-dynamic
When displaying symbols, this option makes readelf use the symbol hash
tables in the file’s dynamic section, rather than the symbol table sections.
When displaying relocations, this option makes readelf display the dynamic
relocations rather than the static relocations.
-x <number or name>
--hex-dump=<number or name>
Displays the contents of the indicated section as a hexadecimal bytes. A number
identifies a particular section by index in the section table; any other string
identifies all sections with that name in the object file.
-R <number or name>
--relocated-dump=<number or name>
Displays the contents of the indicated section as a hexadecimal bytes. A number
identifies a particular section by index in the section table; any other string
identifies all sections with that name in the object file. The contents of the
section will be relocated before they are displayed.
-p <number or name>
--string-dump=<number or name>
Displays the contents of the indicated section as printable strings. A number
identifies a particular section by index in the section table; any other string
identifies all sections with that name in the object file.
-z
--decompress
Requests that the section(s) being dumped by ‘x’, ‘R’ or ‘p’ options are decom-
pressed before being displayed. If the section(s) are not compressed then they
are displayed as is.
-c
--archive-index
Displays the file symbol index information contained in the header part of binary
archives. Performs the same function as the ‘t’ command to ar, but without
using the BFD library. See Chapter 1 [ar], page 2.
-w[lLiaprmfFsoRtUuTgAckK]
--debug-dump[=rawline,=decodedline,=info,=abbrev,=pubnames,=aranges,=macro,=frames,=frames-i
info,=trace_abbrev,=trace_aranges,=gdb_index,=addr,=cu_
index,=links,=follow-links]
Displays the contents of the DWARF debug sections in the file, if any are
present. Compressed debug sections are automatically decompressed (tem-
Chapter 16: readelf 73
porarily) before they are displayed. If one or more of the optional letters or
words follows the switch then only those type(s) of data will be dumped. The
letters and words refer to the following information:
a
=abbrev Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_abbrev’ section.
A
=addr Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_addr’ section.
c
=cu_index
Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_cu_index’ and/or
‘.debug_tu_index’ sections.
f
=frames Display the raw contents of a ‘.debug_frame’ section.
F
=frame-interp
Display the interpreted contents of a ‘.debug_frame’ section.
g
=gdb_index
Displays the contents of the ‘.gdb_index’ and/or ‘.debug_names’
sections.
i
=info Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_info’ section. Note: the
output from this option can also be restricted by the use of the
‘--dwarf-depth’ and ‘--dwarf-start’ options.
k
=links Displays the contents of the ‘.gnu_debuglink’ and/or
‘.gnu_debugaltlink’ sections. Also displays the link to a
separate dwarf object file (dwo), if one is specified by the
DW AT GNU dwo name or DW AT dwo name attributes in the
‘.debug_info’ section.
K
=follow-links
Display the contents of any selected debug sections that are found
in a linked, separate debug info file. This can result in multiple
versions of the same debug section being displayed if both the main
file and the separate debug info file contain sections with the same
name.
In addition, when displaying DWARF attributes, if a form is found
that references the separate debug info file, then the referenced
contents will also be displayed.
l
=rawline Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_line’ section in a raw format.
Chapter 16: readelf 74
L
=decodedline
Displays the interpreted contents of the ‘.debug_line’ section.
m
=macro Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_macro’ and/or
‘.debug_macinfo’ sections.
o
=loc Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_loc’ and/or
‘.debug_loclists’ sections.
p
=pubnames
Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_pubnames’ and/or
‘.debug_gnu_pubnames’ sections.
r
=aranges Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_aranges’ section.
R
=Ranges Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_ranges’ and/or
‘.debug_rnglists’ sections.
s
=str Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_str’, ‘.debug_line_str’
and/or ‘.debug_str_offsets’ sections.
t
=pubtype Displays the contents of the ‘.debug_pubtypes’ and/or
‘.debug_gnu_pubtypes’ sections.
T
=trace_aranges
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_aranges’ section.
u
=trace_abbrev
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_abbrev’ section.
U
=trace_info
Displays the contents of the ‘.trace_info’ section.
Note: displaying the contents of ‘.debug_static_funcs’, ‘.debug_static_vars’
and ‘debug_weaknames’ sections is not currently supported.
--dwarf-depth=n
Limit the dump of the .debug_info section to n children. This is only useful
with ‘--debug-dump=info’. The default is to print all DIEs; the special value
0 for n will also have this effect.
With a non-zero value for n, DIEs at or deeper than n levels will not be printed.
The range for n is zero-based.
Chapter 16: readelf 75
--dwarf-start=n
Print only DIEs beginning with the DIE numbered n. This is only useful with
‘--debug-dump=info’.
If specified, this option will suppress printing of any header information and all
DIEs before the DIE numbered n. Only siblings and children of the specified
DIE will be printed.
This can be used in conjunction with ‘--dwarf-depth’.
-I
--histogram
Display a histogram of bucket list lengths when displaying the contents of the
symbol tables.
-v
--version
Display the version number of readelf.
-W
--wide Don’t break output lines to fit into 80 columns. By default readelf breaks
section header and segment listing lines for 64-bit ELF files, so that they fit
into 80 columns. This option causes readelf to print each section header resp.
each segment one a single line, which is far more readable on terminals wider
than 80 columns.
-H
--help Display the command line options understood by readelf.
Chapter 17: elfedit 76
17 elfedit
elfedit [‘--input-mach=’machine ]
[‘--input-type=’type ]
[‘--input-osabi=’osabi ]
‘--output-mach=’machine
‘--output-type=’type
‘--output-osabi=’osabi
[‘-v’|‘--version’]
[‘-h’|‘--help’]
elffile ...
elfedit updates the ELF header of ELF files which have the matching ELF machine
and file types. The options control how and which fields in the ELF header should be
updated.
elffile . . . are the ELF files to be updated. 32-bit and 64-bit ELF files are supported, as
are archives containing ELF files.
The long and short forms of options, shown here as alternatives, are equivalent. At
least one of the ‘--output-mach’, ‘--output-type’ and ‘--output-osabi’ options must be
given.
--input-mach=machine
Set the matching input ELF machine type to machine. If ‘--input-mach’ isn’t
specified, it will match any ELF machine types.
The supported ELF machine types are, i386, IAMCU , L1OM , K1OM and
x86-64.
--output-mach=machine
Change the ELF machine type in the ELF header to machine. The supported
ELF machine types are the same as ‘--input-mach’.
--input-type=type
Set the matching input ELF file type to type. If ‘--input-type’ isn’t specified,
it will match any ELF file types.
The supported ELF file types are, rel, exec and dyn.
--output-type=type
Change the ELF file type in the ELF header to type. The supported ELF types
are the same as ‘--input-type’.
--input-osabi=osabi
Set the matching input ELF file OSABI to osabi. If ‘--input-osabi’ isn’t
specified, it will match any ELF OSABIs.
The supported ELF OSABIs are, none, HPUX, NetBSD, GNU , Linux (alias for
GNU ), Solaris, AIX , Irix, FreeBSD, TRU64, Modesto, OpenBSD, OpenVMS,
NSK, AROS and FenixOS.
--output-osabi=osabi
Change the ELF OSABI in the ELF header to osabi. The supported ELF
OSABI are the same as ‘--input-osabi’.
-v
--version
Display the version number of elfedit.
Chapter 17: elfedit 77
-h
--help Display the command line options understood by elfedit.
Chapter 18: Common Options 78
18 Common Options
The following command-line options are supported by all of the programs described in this
manual.
@file Read command-line options from file. The options read are inserted in place
of the original @file option. If file does not exist, or cannot be read, then the
option will be treated literally, and not removed.
Options in file are separated by whitespace. A whitespace character may be
included in an option by surrounding the entire option in either single or double
quotes. Any character (including a backslash) may be included by prefixing the
character to be included with a backslash. The file may itself contain additional
@file options; any such options will be processed recursively.
--help Display the command-line options supported by the program.
--version
Display the version number of the program.
Chapter 19: Selecting the Target System 79
You can specify two aspects of the target system to the gnu binary file utilities, each in
several ways:
• the target
• the architecture
In the following summaries, the lists of ways to specify values are in order of decreasing
precedence. The ways listed first override those listed later.
The commands to list valid values only list the values for which the programs you
are running were configured. If they were configured with ‘--enable-targets=all’, the
commands list most of the available values, but a few are left out; not all targets can be
configured in at once because some of them can only be configured native (on hosts with
the same type as the target system).
objdump Target
Ways to specify:
1. command line option: ‘-b’ or ‘--target’
2. environment variable GNUTARGET
3. deduced from the input file
objdump Architecture
Ways to specify:
1. command line option: ‘-m’ or ‘--architecture’
2. deduced from the input file
20 Reporting Bugs
Your bug reports play an essential role in making the binary utilities reliable.
Reporting a bug may help you by bringing a solution to your problem, or it may not. But
in any case the principal function of a bug report is to help the entire community by making
the next version of the binary utilities work better. Bug reports are your contribution to
their maintenance.
In order for a bug report to serve its purpose, you must include the information that
enables us to fix the bug.
• The version of the utility. Each utility announces it if you start it with the ‘--version’
argument.
Without this, we will not know whether there is any point in looking for the bug in the
current version of the binary utilities.
• Any patches you may have applied to the source, including any patches made to the
BFD library.
• The type of machine you are using, and the operating system name and version number.
• What compiler (and its version) was used to compile the utilities—e.g. “gcc-2.7”.
• The command arguments you gave the utility to observe the bug. To guarantee you
will not omit something important, list them all. A copy of the Makefile (or the output
from make) is sufficient.
If we were to try to guess the arguments, we would probably guess wrong and then we
might not encounter the bug.
• A complete input file, or set of input files, that will reproduce the bug. If the utility is
reading an object file or files, then it is generally most helpful to send the actual object
files.
If the source files were produced exclusively using gnu programs (e.g., gcc, gas, and/or
the gnu ld), then it may be OK to send the source files rather than the object files. In
this case, be sure to say exactly what version of gcc, or whatever, was used to produce
the object files. Also say how gcc, or whatever, was configured.
• A description of what behavior you observe that you believe is incorrect. For example,
“It gets a fatal signal.”
Of course, if the bug is that the utility gets a fatal signal, then we will certainly notice
it. But if the bug is incorrect output, we might not notice unless it is glaringly wrong.
You might as well not give us a chance to make a mistake.
Even if the problem you experience is a fatal signal, you should still say so explicitly.
Suppose something strange is going on, such as your copy of the utility is out of sync,
or you have encountered a bug in the C library on your system. (This has happened!)
Your copy might crash and ours would not. If you told us to expect a crash, then when
ours fails to crash, we would know that the bug was not happening for us. If you had
not told us to expect a crash, then we would not be able to draw any conclusion from
our observations.
• If you wish to suggest changes to the source, send us context diffs, as generated by
diff with the ‘-u’, ‘-c’, or ‘-p’ option. Always send diffs from the old file to the new
file. If you wish to discuss something in the ld source, refer to it by context, not by
line number.
The line numbers in our development sources will not match those in your sources.
Your line numbers would convey no useful information to us.
Here are some things that are not necessary:
• A description of the envelope of the bug.
Often people who encounter a bug spend a lot of time investigating which changes to
the input file will make the bug go away and which changes will not affect it.
Chapter 20: Reporting Bugs 83
This is often time consuming and not very useful, because the way we will find the
bug is by running a single example under the debugger with breakpoints, not by pure
deduction from a series of examples. We recommend that you save your time for
something else.
Of course, if you can find a simpler example to report instead of the original one, that
is a convenience for us. Errors in the output will be easier to spot, running under the
debugger will take less time, and so on.
However, simplification is not vital; if you do not want to do this, report the bug
anyway and send us the entire test case you used.
• A patch for the bug.
A patch for the bug does help us if it is a good one. But do not omit the necessary
information, such as the test case, on the assumption that a patch is all we need. We
might see problems with your patch and decide to fix the problem another way, or we
might not understand it at all.
Sometimes with programs as complicated as the binary utilities it is very hard to
construct an example that will make the program follow a certain path through the
code. If you do not send us the example, we will not be able to construct one, so we
will not be able to verify that the bug is fixed.
And if we cannot understand what bug you are trying to fix, or why your patch should
be an improvement, we will not install it. A test case will help us to understand.
• A guess about what the bug is or what it depends on.
Such guesses are usually wrong. Even we cannot guess right about such things without
first using the debugger to find the facts.
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License 84
under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is
not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant
Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.
The “Cover Texts” are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover
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be at most 25 words.
A “Transparent” copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented
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The “Title Page” means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following
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The “publisher” means any person or entity that distributes copies of the Document
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A section “Entitled XYZ” means a named subunit of the Document whose title either
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The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that
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be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties:
any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no
effect on the meaning of this License.
2. VERBATIM COPYING
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License 86
You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or
noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license
notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and
that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use
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you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies.
If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions
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display copies.
3. COPYING IN QUANTITY
If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of
the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document’s license notice requires
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these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on
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of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title
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Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the
Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other
respects.
If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put
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rest onto adjacent pages.
If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100,
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It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well
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with an updated version of the Document.
4. MODIFICATIONS
You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions
of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely
this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing
distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of
it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:
A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the
Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any,
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License 87
be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as
a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.
B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for
authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five
of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer
than five), unless they release you from this requirement.
C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the
publisher.
D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.
E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other
copyright notices.
F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public
permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form
shown in the Addendum below.
G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover
Texts given in the Document’s license notice.
H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.
I. Preserve the section Entitled “History”, Preserve its Title, and add to it an item
stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version
as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled “History” in the Docu-
ment, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document
as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as
stated in the previous sentence.
J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to
a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in
the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the
“History” section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published
at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the
version it refers to gives permission.
K. For any section Entitled “Acknowledgements” or “Dedications”, Preserve the Title
of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the
contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.
L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and
in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the
section titles.
M. Delete any section Entitled “Endorsements”. Such a section may not be included
in the Modified Version.
N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled “Endorsements” or to conflict in
title with any Invariant Section.
O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.
If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify
as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at
your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License 88
titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version’s license notice. These
titles must be distinct from any other section titles.
You may add a section Entitled “Endorsements”, provided it contains nothing but
endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties—for example, statements of
peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative
definition of a standard.
You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up
to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified
Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be
added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already
includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement
made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but
you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that
added the old one.
The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission
to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified
Version.
5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS
You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License,
under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you
include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents,
unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license
notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.
The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical
Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant
Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section
unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or
publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment
to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined
work.
In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled “History” in the vari-
ous original documents, forming one section Entitled “History”; likewise combine any
sections Entitled “Acknowledgements”, and any sections Entitled “Dedications”. You
must delete all sections Entitled “Endorsements.”
6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS
You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released
under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various
documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you
follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all
other respects.
You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individu-
ally under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted
document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of
that document.
Appendix A: GNU Free Documentation License 89
Binutils Index
listings strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 S
scripts, ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
section addresses in objdump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
M section headers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
machine instructions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 section information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
moving in archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 section sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
MRI compatibility, ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 sections, full contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
size. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
size display format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
N size number format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
name duplication in archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 sorting symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
name length . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 source code context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
nm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 source disassembly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
nm compatibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 source file name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
nm format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 source filenames for object files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
not writing archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 stab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
start-address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
stop-address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
O strings. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
objdump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 strings, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
objdump inlines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 strip. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
object code format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14, 31, 45, 47, 55 Strip absolute paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
object file header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 symbol index. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 43
object file information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 symbol index, listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
object file offsets. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 symbol line numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
object file sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 symbol table entries, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
object formats available. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
operations on archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 symbols, discarding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
P T
plugins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 13 thin archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
printing from archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
printing strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
U
undefined symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Q Unix compatibility, ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
quick append to archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 unwind information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Update ELF header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
updating an archive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
R
radix for section sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
ranlib . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 43 V
readelf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 version . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
relative placement in archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 VMA in objdump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
relocation entries, in object file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
removing symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
repeated names in archive. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 W
replacement in archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 wide output, printing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
reporting bugs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 writing archive index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5