Provided by: abigail-tools_1.0~rc3-1_amd64 
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)