NAME | INVOCATION | ENVIRONMENT | OPTIONS | RETURN VALUE | AUTHOR | COPYRIGHT | COLOPHON |
ABIPKGDIFF(1) Libabigail ABIPKGDIFF(1)
abipkgdiff - compare ABIs of ELF files in software packages abipkgdiff compares the Application Binary Interfaces (ABI) of the ELF binaries contained in two software packages. The software pack‐ age formats currently supported are Deb, RPM, tar archives (either compressed or not) and plain directories that contain binaries. For a comprehensive ABI change report that includes changes about function and variable sub-types, the two input packages must be accompanied with their debug information packages that contain debug information in DWARF format.
abipkgdiff [option] <package1> <package2> package1 and package2 are the packages that contain the binaries to be compared.
abipkgdiff loads two default suppression specifications files, merges their content and use it to filter out ABI change reports that might be considered as false positives to users. · Default system-wide suppression specification file It's located by the optional environment variable LIBABIGAIL_DEFAULT_SYSTEM_SUPPRESSION_FILE. If that environment variable is not set, then abipkgdiff tries to load the suppression file $libdir/libabigail/libabigail-default.abignore. If that file is not present, then no default system-wide suppression specification file is loaded. · Default user suppression specification file. It's located by the optional environment LIBABIGAIL_DEFAULT_USER_SUPPRESSION_FILE. If that environment variable is not set, then abipkgdiff tries to load the suppression file $HOME/.abignore. If that file is not present, then no default user suppression specification is loaded.
· --help | -h Display a short help about the command and exit. · --version | -v Display the version of the program and exit. · --debug-info-pkg1 | --d1 <path> For cases where the debug information for package1 is split out into a separate file, tells abipkgdiff where to find that separate debug information package. · --debug-info-pkg2 | --d2 <path> For cases where the debug information for package2 is split out into a separate file, tells abipkgdiff where to find that separate debug information package. · --devel-pkg1 | --devel1 <path> Specifies where to find the Development Package associated with the first package to be compared. That Development Package at path should at least contain header files in which public types exposed by the libraries (of the first package to be compared) are defined. When this option is provided, the tool filters out reports about ABI changes to types that are NOT defined in these header files. · --devel-pkg2 | --devel2 <path> Specifies where to find the Development Package associated with the second package to be compared. That Development Package at path should at least contains header files in which public types exposed by the libraries (of the second package to be compared) are defined. When this option is provided, the tool filters out reports about ABI changes to types that are NOT defined in these header files. · --drop-private-types This option is to be used with the --devel-pkg1 and --devel-pkg2 options. With this option, types that are NOT defined in the headers are entirely dropped from the internal representation build by Libabigail to represent the ABI. They thus don't have to be filtered out from the final ABI change report because they are not even present in Libabigail's representation. Without this option however, those private types are kept in the internal representation and later filtered out from the report. This options thus potentially makes Libabigail consume less memory. It's meant to be mainly used to optimize the memory consumption of the tool on binaries with a lot of publicly defined and exported types. · --dso-only Compare ELF files that are shared libraries, only. Do not compare executable files, for instance. · --redundant In the diff reports, do display redundant changes. A redundant change is a change that has been displayed elsewhere in a given report. · --harmless In the diff report, display only the harmless changes. By default, the harmless changes are filtered out of the diff report keep the clutter to a minimum and have a greater chance to spot real ABI issues. · --no-linkage-name In the resulting report, do not display the linkage names of the added, removed, or changed functions or variables. · --no-added-syms Do not show the list of functions, variables, or any symbol that was added. · --no-added-binaries Do not show the list of binaries that got added to the second package. Please note that the presence of such added binaries is not considered like an ABI change by this tool; as such, it doesn't have any impact on the exit code of the tool. It does only have an informational value. Removed binaries are, however, considered as an ABI change. · --no-abignore Do not search the package2 for the presence of suppression files. · --no-parallel By default, abipkgdiff will use all the processors it has available to execute concurrently. This option tells it not to extract packages or run comparisons in parallel. · --no-default-suppression Do not load the default suppression specification files. · --suppressions | --suppr <path-to-suppressions> Use a suppression specification file located at path-to-suppressions. Note that this option can appear multiple times on the command line. In that case, all of the suppression specification files are taken into account. Please note that, by default, if this option is not provided, then the default suppression specification files are loaded . · --linux-kernel-abi-whitelist | --lkaw <path-to-whitelist> When comparing two Linux kernel RPM packages, this option points to the white list of names of ELF symbols of functions and variables that must be compared for ABI changes. That white list is called a "Linux kernel ABI white list". Any other function or variable which ELF symbol are not present in that white list will not be considered by the ABI comparison process. If this option is not provided -- thus if no white list is provided -- then the ABI of all publicly defined and exported functions and global variables by the Linux Kernel binaries are compared. · --lkaw-pkg <path-to-whitelist-package> When comparing two Linux kernel RPM packages, this option points an RPM package containining several white lists of names of ELF symbols of functions and variables that must be compared for ABI changes. Those white lists are called "Linux kernel ABI white lists". From the content of that white list package, this program then chooses the appropriate Linux kernel ABI white list to consider when comparing the ABI of Linux kernel binaries contained in the Linux kernel packages provided on the command line. That choosen Linux kernel ABI white list contains the list of names of ELF symbols of functions and variables that must be compared for ABI changes. Any other function or variable which ELF symbol are not present in that white list will not be considered by the ABI comparison process. If this option is not provided -- thus if no white list is provided -- then the ABI of all publicly defined and exported functions and global variables by the Linux Kernel binaries are compared. · --no-unreferenced-symbols In the resulting report, do not display change information about function and variable symbols that are not referenced by any debug information. Note that for these symbols not referenced by any debug information, the change information displayed is either added or removed symbols. · --no-show-locs Do not show information about where in the second shared library the respective type was changed. · --no-show-relative-offset-changes Without this option, when the offset of a data member changes, the change report not only mentions the older and newer offset, but it also mentions by how many bits the data member changes. With this option, the latter is not shown. · --show-identical-binaries Show the names of the all binaries compared, including the binaries whose ABI compare equal. By default, when this option is not provided, only binaries with ABI changes are mentionned in the output. · --fail-no-dbg Make the program fail and return a non-zero exit code if couldn't read any of the debug information that comes from the debug info packages that were given on the command line. If no debug info package were provided on the command line then this option is not active. Note that the non-zero exit code returned by the program as a result of this option is the constant ABIDIFF_ERROR. To know the numerical value of that constant, please refer to the exit code documentation. · --keep-tmp-files Do not erase the temporary directory files that are created during the execution of the tool. · --verbose Emit verbose progress messages.
The exit code of the abipkgdiff command is either 0 if the ABI of the binaries compared are equal, or non-zero if they differ or if the tool encountered an error. In the later case, the value of the exit code is the same as for the abidiff tool.
Dodji Seketeli
2014-2016, Red Hat, Inc.
This page is part of the libabigail (ABI Generic Analysis and
Instrumentation Library) project. Information about the project can
be found at ⟨https://sourceware.org/libabigail/⟩. If you have a bug
report for this manual page, see
⟨http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=libabigail⟩.
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Jul 05, 2017 ABIPKGDIFF(1)