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Release Notes for Elftoolchain Software Version 0.7.1

About The Project

The Elftoolchain project develops BSD-licensed implementations of essential compilation tools and libraries for handling ELF based program objects.

About The Release

This is the first release on the v0.7 "stable" code line.

Since the prior v0.6.1 release, we have added support for a few more machine architectures, improved our support of the DWARF4 debug format, and have added experimental support for the Microsoft (TM) Portable Executable format. A number of bugs have been fixed, and the project's documentation has been improved. An implementation of a link editorld is in progress.

Libraries and Utilities

This release comprises the following libraries and utilities.

Name	Description
ar	Archive manager.
addr2line	Debug tool.
brandelf	Manage the ELF brand on executables.
c++filt	Translate encoded symbols.
elfcopy	Copy and translate between object formats.
elfdump	Diagnostic tool.
findtextrel	Find undesired text relocations.
libdwarf	DWARF access library.
libelf	ELF access library.
mcs	Manage comment sections.
nm	List symbols in an ELF object.
ranlib	Add archive symbol tables to an archive.
readelf	Display ELF information.
size	List object sizes.
strings	Extract printable strings.
strip	Discard information from ELF objects.

This release also contains the following software that is under development:

Name	Description
ld	Program linker.
libpe	PE (Portable Executable) access library.

Documentation

Each public API and invocable utility has a reference manual entry. We currently offer 355 manual entries, documented in 197 manual pages.

Additionally, this release contains the following documentation:

Name	Description
libelf-by-example	A tutorial introduction to libelf.

Test Suites

The release contains the following test suites:

Name	Description
ar	Test the ar utility.
elfcopy	Test the elfcopy utility.
elfdump	Test the elfdump utility.
libdwarf	Test the libdwarf library.
libelf	Test the libelf library.
libelftc	Test the libelftc support library.
nm	Test the nm utility.

System Requirements

This software is designed to run on Unix(TM)-like operating systems such as the BSD-family of operating systems and GNU/Linux.

This release has been built and tested on the following operating systems:

Operating System	Version	Supported Architectures
FreeBSD	10.2	amd64 & i386
NetBSD	7.0	i386
Ubuntu GNU/Linux	14.04LTS	x86_64

Installation and Upgrades

Installation

Instructions for building and installing this software from source are described in the file "INSTALL".

Upgrading

• Consumers of the libdwarf API should note that the Dwarf_Off type has changed to an unsigned type, so as to be compatible with other open-source libdwarf implementations.
• Three functions in the libdwarf API have been deprecated and two extension APIs have been added.

Release Information

Changes in this release

Significant changes include:

• addr2line
  • Support the DW_AT_ranges debug attribute.
  • Improve DWARF4 compatibility.
  • addr2line supports new options -a, -i, -p.
  • Compilation units lacking debug information are handled more robustly.
  • Memory leaks were fixed.
• ar/ranlib
  • The ranlib utility is now documented in its own manual page.
  • The handling of corrupt archives has been improved.
  • ar now supports a -U option that disables its deterministic (-D) mode.
  • ar no longer allows extraction of archive entries whose pathnames contain .., or whose target directory would be altered by a symbolic link.
• brandelf
  • The documentation for brandelf has been improved.
• elfcopy/strip/mcs
  • strip no longer strips local debugging symbols when the -xoption is specified.
  • Compatibility with GNU binutils has been improved.
  • The elfcopy and strip utilities will now preserve hard links when modifying an object file.
  • Support for new functionality controlled by options--localize-hidden, --extract-dwo and --strip-dwo has been added.
  • Bugs in the behavior of the -N and -X options were fixed.
  • Nameless global symbols are now handled correctly.
  • SHT_GROUP handling has been fixed in elfcopy andstrip.
  • elfcopy now supports the conversion of ELF objects to PE images.
• elfdump
  • elfdump can now dump multiple GOT sections.
  • elfdump now understands the EM_AARCH64, EM_IAMCU,EM_PPC64, and EM_RISCV machine types and theSTT_SPARC_REGISTER section type.
  • Symbols with STB_GNU_UNIQUE are now supported.
• findtextrel
  • The manual pages were improved.
• ld
  • This utility is new in this release. This utility is currently under development, and should be considered unstable.
• libdwarf- The line number program generated by libdwarf has been improved. - Support for the DWARF4 .debug_types section was added. - Parsing of DWARF4 line sections was fixed. - New APIs dwarf_attroffset(),

  dwarf_get_cu_die_offset_given_cu_header_offset_b(),dwarf_get_die_infotypes_flag(),dwarf_get_section_max_offsets(),dwarf_get_section_max_offsets_b(), dwarf_highpc_b(),dwarf_loclist_from_expr_b(), dwarf_next_types_section(),dwarf_offdie_b(), and dwarf_siblingof_b() have been added. Of these, dwarf_attroffset() and dwarf_next_types_section()are extensions to the SGI libdwarf API.

  • Support for operators DW_OP_GNU_addr_index,DW_OP_GNU_const_index, DW_OP_GNU_const_type,DW_OP_GNU_convert, DW_OP_GNU_deref_type,DW_OP_GNU_encoded_addr, DW_OP_GNU_entry_value,DW_OP_GNU_implicit_pointer, DW_OP_GNU_parameter_ref,DW_OP_GNU_regval_type, DW_OP_GNU_reinterpret,DW_OP_GNU_uninit and DW_OP_push_object_address have been added.
  • APIs dwarf_get_cu_die_offset_given_cu_header_offset(),dwarf_offdie(), dwarf_siblingof() have been deprecated.
  • libdwarf now supports relocation for the aarch64architecture.
  • libdwarf now handles architectures that use ".rel" relocations for debug data correctly.
  • The EM_IAMCU architecture is now recognized.
  • Documentation has been improved, memory leaks and other bugs have been fixed.
• libelf
  • Reference documentation has been improved.
  • Support building on the AARCH64 architecture has added.
  • Bug fixes have been applied.
• libelf-by-example
  • No changes since the prior release.
• libelftc
  • Support for the Portable Executable format has been added.
  • Overview documentation for this support library has been added.
  • New APIs elftc_string_table_from_section().elftc_string_table_image(), elftc_string_table_insert(),elftc_string_table_lookup(), elftc_string_table_remove()and elftc_string_table_to_string() have been added.
  • The demangling support functions now support IEEE floating point types, TLS special names and various GNU extensions.
  • Other bugs have fixed.
• libpe
  • This library is new in this release. This library is currently under development, and should be considered unstable.
• nm
  • A new alias --extern-only for option -g is now supported.
  • Bugs have been fixed.
• readelf
  • The handling of objects with missing symbol names was improved.
  • readelf now supports dumping .debug_types sections.
  • The DW_AT_language, DW_FORM_exprloc,DW_FORM_flag_present, DW_FORM_ref_sig8 andDW_FORM_sec_offset types are now supported.
  • GNU DWARF operator extensions are now recognized by readelf.
  • readelf can now display architecture specific register names on some architectures.
  • readelf now handles AArch64 types and relocations and recognizes the RISC-V and IAMCU architectures.
  • Support has been added for printing binary notes for FreeBSD, Xen and Linux, and for printing core notes for FreeBSD and Linux.
  • Support for dumping symbols with the STB_GNU_UNIQUE binding has been added.
  • Support for dumping symbols with the STT_SPARC_REGISTERregister type has been added.
• size
  • The manual page for size has been improved.
• strings
  • The manual page for strings has been improved.

Outstanding Issues

There were no outstanding issues at the time of the release.

Known Limitations

This release has the following limitations:

Test Statistics

The test summary for this release is presented below:

Suite	Tests(32&64bit)	FreeBSD(i386 & amd64)	NetBSD(i386)	Ubuntu 10.04LTS(x86_64)
ar	235 & 230	P:235 & 230	P:235	P:230
elfcopy	160	P:160	P:160	P:160
elfdump	155	P:155	P:155	P:155
libdwarf	153	P:153	P:153	P:153
libelf	1030	P:1026, U:4	P:1026, U:4	P:1026, U:4
libelftc	16	P:16	P:16	P:16
nm	183	P:183	P:183	P:183

Key:

P:	Test successes.
F:	Test failures.
U:	Unresolved tests.

Notes

More Information

The project's website is at http://elftoolchain.sourceforge.net/.

Developer Community

The project's developers may be contacted using the mailing list:elftoolchain-developers@lists.sourceforge.net.

Reporting Bugs

Please use our bug tracker for viewing existing bug reports and for submitting new bug reports.

Copyright and License

This software is copyright its authors, and is distributed under theBSD License.

Source: README.rst, updated 2016-02-17