NAME

       abidw - serialize the ABI of an ELF file

       abidw  reads  a shared library in ELF format and emits an XML representation of its ABI to
       standard output.  The emitted representation includes all the globally  defined  functions
       and  variables,  along  with a complete representation of their types.  It also includes a
       representation of the globally defined ELF symbols of the file.  The input shared  library
       must contain associated debug information in DWARF format.

INVOCATION

          abidw [options] [<path-to-elf-file>]

OPTIONS

          • --help | -h

            Display a short help about the command and exit.

          • --version | -v

            Display the version of the program and exit.

          • --debug-info-dir | -d <dir-path>

            In  cases  where  the  debug  info for path-to-elf-file is in a separate file that is
            located in a non-standard place, this tells abidw where to look for that  debug  info
            file.

            Note that dir-path must point to the root directory under which the debug information
            is arranged in a tree-like manner.  Under Red Hat based systems,  that  directory  is
            usually <root>/usr/lib/debug.

            Note  that this option is not mandatory for split debug information installed by your
            system's package manager because then abidw knows where to find it.

          • --out-file <file-path>

            This option instructs abidw to emit the XML representation of  path-to-elf-file  into
            the file file-path, rather than emitting it to its standard output.

          • --noout

            This  option  instructs  abidw  to not emit the XML representation of the ABI.  So it
            only reads the ELF and debug information, builds the internal representation  of  the
            ABI and exits.  This option is usually useful for debugging purposes.

          • --check-alternate-debug-info <elf-path>

            If  the  debug  info for the file elf-path contains a reference to an alternate debug
            info file, abidw checks that it can find that alternate debug  info  file.   In  that
            case, it emits a meaningful success message mentioning the full path to the alternate
            debug info file found.  Otherwise, it emits an error code.

          • --no-show-locs
              Do not show information about where in the second  shared  library  the  respective
              type was changed.

          • --check-alternate-debug-info-base-name <elf-path>

            Like  --check-alternate-debug-info, but in the success message, only mention the base
            name of the debug info file; not its full path.

          • --load-all-types

            By default, libabigail (and thus abidw) only loads  types  that  are  reachable  from
            functions  and  variables  declarations that are publicly defined and exported by the
            binary.  So only those types are present in the output of abidw.  This option however
            makes  abidw  load  all  the  types  defined in the binaries, even those that are not
            reachable from public declarations.

          • --abidiff
              Load the ABI of the ELF binary given in  argument,  save  it  in  libabigail's  XML
              format  in  a  temporary file; read the ABI from the temporary XML file and compare
              the ABI that has been read back  against  the  ABI  of  the  ELF  binary  given  in
              argument.   The  ABIs  should  compare  equal.   If they don't, the program emits a
              diagnostic and exits with a non-zero code.

              This is a debugging and sanity check option.

          • --stats

            Emit statistics about various internal things.

          • --verbose

            Emit verbose logs about the progress of miscellaneous internal things.

NOTES

   Alternate debug info files
       As of the version 4 of the DWARF specification,  Alternate  debug  information  is  a  GNU
       extension to the DWARF specification.  It has however been proposed for inclusion into the
       upcoming version 5 of the DWARF standard.  You can read more about the GNU  extensions  to
       the DWARF standard here.

AUTHOR

       Dodji Seketeli

COPYRIGHT

       2014, Red Hat, Inc.

                                          March 10, 2016                                 ABIDW(1)