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* doc/manuals/Makefile: New file, generated by sphinx-quickstart. * doc/manuals/abidiff.rst: New manual for abidiff. * doc/manuals/abidw.rst: New manual for abidw. * doc/manuals/abilint.rst: New manual for abilint. * doc/manuals/conf.py: New configuration file generated by sphinx-quickstart. * doc/manuals/index.rst: The root of the this documentation. * doc/manuals/libabigail-overview.rst: The overview of libabigail. * doc/manuals/tools.rst: The root of the tools manuals. Signed-off-by: Dodji Seketeli <dodji@redhat.com>
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#######################
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Overview of Libabigail
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#######################
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Libabigail stands for the Application Binary Interface Generic
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Analysis and Instrumentation Library.
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It aims at helping developers and software distributors to spot some
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ABI-related issues like interface incompatibility in `ELF`_ shared
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libraries.
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The type of interface incompatibilities that ``libabigail`` focuses on
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is related to changes on the exported ELF functions and variables
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symbols, as well as layout and size changes of data types of the
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functions and variables exported by shared libraries.
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In other words, if the return type of a function exported by a shared
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library changes in an incompatible way from one version of a given
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shared library to another, we want ``libabigail`` to help people catch
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that.
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In more concrete terms, ``libabigail`` can parse a shared library in
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`ELF`_ format, accompanied with its associated debug information in
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`DWARF`_ format, build an internal representation of all the functions
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and variables it exports, along with their types. It also builds an
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internal representation of the `ELF_ symbols`_ of these functions and
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variables. That information about these exported functions and
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variables is roughly what we consider as being the ABI of the shared
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library, at least, in the scope of Libabigail.
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Aside of this internal representation, ``libabigail`` provides
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facilities to perform deep comparisons of two ABIs. That is, it can
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compare the types of two sets of functions or variables and represents
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the result in a way that allows it to emit textual reports about the
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differences.
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This allows us to write tools like :doc:`abidiff` that can compare the
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ABI of two shared libraries and represent the result in a meaningful
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enough way to help us spot ABI incompatibilities.
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.. _ELF: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format
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.. _DWARF: http://www.dwarfstd.org
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.. _Elf symbols: https://blogs.oracle.com/ali/entry/inside_elf_symbol_tables
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