Last update: August 20, 2024
The distribution consists entirely of C source files (along with GNU configure scripts to configure and build executables). Builds and works on Linux, MacOS, and Windows msys2 and on across all of those the programs can read all the object formats supported.
Requires a bash or sh shell, a C compiler, python3, m4, libtool, autoconf, and automake.
On Debian and Ubuntu systems, these can quickly be installed with
apt-get install autoconf automake libtool m4 gcc python3
If unsure what object format a file might be, the object_detector will tell you. (On linux and MacOs the 'file' command will do that too.)
A program that reads a minimal amount of object header content (for any of the supported object types) and prints basic information (file type, offset size, and endianness) about each file.
A program that reads elf object files and prints the header information. It also checks for certain errors including wasted space in the object files. It also dumps Elf relocation sections, Elf symtab sections, and the Elf dynamic section.
A program that reads PE object executables or dlls and prints header information (mainly focused on sections that may be DWARF data).
A program that reads MacOS dSYM files and prints header information. (mainly focused on sections that may be DWARF data).
The only library used is standard C libc.
The code does not depend on any Elf, Mach-o, or Windows libraries or headers, it just depends on a basic POSIX/unix/Linux set of headers plus libc (or equivalent).
The test directory contains numerous examples of using the programs.
To dump DWARF section contents one should use dwarfdump (a part of the libdwarf-code github project) or GNU readelf (in GNU binutils).
For Msys2 (Windows): The configure option --enable-nonstandardprintf may be required to avoid errors in certain printf.
Download the release from
https://github.com/davea42/readelfobj-code
and unpack
#For example:
tar xf readelfobj-1.0.0.xz
cd readelfobj-1.0.0
./configure --enable-wall
make
make check
#Building in a directory separate from
#the download also works
Using a git clone is not recommended as the autogen.sh step requires one have the GNU autotools installed. We build outside the source tree to keep the tree clean.
#git clone https://github.com/davea42/readelfobj-code
#Linux/Unix/MacOS/MinGW(Windows)
src=/path/to/readelfobj-code
cd $src
sh autogen.sh
bld=/tmp/robld
rm -rf $bld
mkdir $bld
cd $bld
# may not be necessary.
sh $src/configure --enable-wall
make check
To update configure, update configure.ac and/or one or more Makefile.am and do, in the top level directory: autoreconf -vif You will need several GNU autotools installed for this autoreconf to work.