Context Navigation

The ELF Tool Chain Project

The ELF Tool Chain Project

Quick Links

News

2012/09/24: Release 0.6.1 is now available for download.
2011/11/16: Release 0.5.1 is now available for download.

About This Project

We maintain BSD licensed implementations of essential compilation tools and libraries for building and analyzing ELF based program images.

Supported Operating Systems

Our source code is known to work on the following operating systems:

Why is this project useful?

This project provides tools for program development. Notably:

Our code is structured as a set of tools written using a set of well-documented libraries. This approach comes in useful when custom tools for manipulating ELF programs and shared libraries are desired.
We strive to keep to the traditional BSD standard for quality in code and documentation. We strive to 'Do The Right Thing'.
Our code is licensed under a liberal license.
As a project, we strive to make our decisions in a transparent and inclusive manner.

What are the shortcomings of this project?

Our code is relatively new, it has not seen the level of adoption that the GNU binutils code base has.
Our code base only deals with ELF objects; other object file formats are not supported.
Our development team is small, comprising of volunteers.

How do I help?

Please join the mailing list; let us know how you are using our code and how your experience has been.
Please review our code and documentation; let us know if you find a bug.
Pick up a ticket from our list of open tickets, and send in fixes.
We need help in setting up build and test automation for the OSes we support, please see BuildAutomation.

Implementation Status

Tool	Description	Development Status	Owner	Repository Location	Comments
Native or POSIX-mandated Tools
ar	Archive manager.	released	kaiwang27	ar/
as	Assembler.	planning			(see libmc, isa)
brandelf	Set/read the ELF brand for an executable.	released		brandelf/
c++filt	Translated encoded symbols.	released	kaiwang27	c++filt/
elfdump	Diagnostic tool.	released	kaiwang27	elfdump/
isa	Instruction set analyser	in development	jkoshy	isa/
ld	Link editor.	in development	kaiwang27	ld/
nm	List symbols in an ELF object.	released	hglee	nm/
mcs	Manage comment sections in ELF objects.	released	kaiwang27	elfcopy/
ranlib	Generate an archive symbol table.	released	kaiwang27	ar/
size	List ELF object sizes.	released	samarunraj	size/
strings	Extract printable strings from an ELF object.	released	samarunraj	strings/
strip	Discard information from objects.	released	kaiwang27	elfcopy/
GNU Tools
addr2line	Debug tool.	released	kaiwang27	addr2line/
elfcopy	Copy and translate between object formats.	released	kaiwang27	elfcopy/
findtextrel	Find undesired text relocations.	released	kaiwang27	findtextrel/
objdump	Display object information.	planning			Merge with elfdump?
readelf	Display ELF information.	released	kaiwang27	readelf/
Libraries and API sets
libdwarf	A library for parsing DWARF debug information.	released	kaiwang27	libdwarf/	"pfgshield-freebsd" (email suppressed) notes that early versions of SGI's libdwarf library were released under a non-GPL'ed license.
libelf	A library for reading and writing ELF objects.	released	jkoshy	libelf/
libelftc	Common code used by tools.	released		libelftc/
libmc	Machine/assembly code manipulation.	planning			For use in an optimizing linker, debugger and assember, program instrumentation tools, and the like.
Test Suites
ar	The test suite for the `ar` utility.	released	kaiwang27	test/ar/
elfcopy	The test suite for `elfcopy` utility.	released	kaiwang27	test/elfcopy/
elfdump	The test suite for `elfdump` utility.	released	kaiwang27	test/elfdump/
libdwarf-test-suite	The test suite for the `libdwarf` library.	released	kaiwang27	test/libdwarf/
libelf	The test suite for the `libelf` library.	released	jkoshy	test/libelf/
nm	The test suite for the `nm` utility.	released		test/nm/
size	The test suite for the `size` utility.	planning			See ticket #9.
strings	The test suite for the `strings` utility.	planning			See ticket #10.
Documentation
Manual pages	Reference documentation.	released	jkoshy	(multiple locations)	Each utility and library API has a manual entry.
libelf by Example	Tutorial introduction to programming with `libelf`.	Released	jkoshy	documentation/libelf-by-example
libdwarf by Example	An introduction to DWARF and libdwarf.	planning	jkoshy	TBD

Getting Started

Open Project-Wide Tickets

Ticket	Status	Owner	Milestone	Summary
#28	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Testing for memory leaks
#30	new	jkoshy	Future Work	Restrict symbol visibility and use of relocations in our libraries
#273	assigned	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Document the project's coding style
#279	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Create tools to ease building the project's source code on multiple OSes
#286	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Package up the project's manual pages
#288	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Setup infrastructure to perform test coverage measurements
#293	new	jkoshy	Future Work	Localization of messages
#306	new	jkoshy	Future Work	Supporting systems with case-insensitive file systems
#321	assigned	jkoshy	Future Work	Patch to get libraries and applications building with autotools
#336	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Support for Fedora
#352	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Revisit the use of binary data files in test suites
#359	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Configure TET correctly on NetBSD/amd64
#367	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Code review and code cleanups
#370	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Code duplication in ar(1) and elfcopy(1)
#373	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Port the project to OpenBSD
#374	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Darwin support.
#377	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Implement "libar"
#384	new	jkoshy	Future Work	Refactoring: move common code in elfcopy/mcs/strip to a library
#385	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Port the project to OpenIndiana
#386	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	dwarf_srclines() should sort line number array since dwarf line numbers are not always globally sorted in .debug_line
#387	assigned	kaiwang27	RELEASE_1_0	[patch] DW_LNE_end_sequence does not get added to a line entry
#388	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	File descriptor exhaustion under Minix
#391	accepted	jkoshy	Future Work	[PATCH] GNU/kFreeBSD build fixes
#393	new	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Scan sources for typos in user messages
#395	accepted	jkoshy	Trac Hosting	Migrate Trac to a standalone instance
#399	assigned	jkoshy	Future Work	Support building on the Android OS
#410	accepted	jkoshy	RELEASE_1_0	Merge requests for v0.6 -stable

Project History

This work was originally a part of the FreeBSD Project; it has been moved to SourceForge.Net to encourage wider participation from the open-source developer community.

elftoolchain