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)