[Desktop_architects] Tools to help enforce ABI stability

Banginwar, Rajesh rajesh.banginwar at intel.com
Wed Mar 15 09:44:44 PST 2006


LSB relies on its test suite in addition to just checking the exported
symbols. Again this is as good as the test suite is and hence not full
proof. 

Dwarfdump approach might be helpful but again it is not full proof and
another issue is who will use it? Can we just rely on each package
developer to use it?

-Rajesh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: desktop_architects-bounces at lists.osdl.org
> [mailto:desktop_architects-bounces at lists.osdl.org] On Behalf Of Dan
Kegel
> Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:13 AM
> To: Desktop Architects
> Subject: [Desktop_architects] Tools to help enforce ABI stability
> 
> What tools exist out there to enforce ABI stability?
> Gnome, KDE, and LSB all seem to have tools that
> compare a shared library to a list of expected exports.
> That's great for disciplined projects.
> 
> It might also be handy to have a tool that can be used
> universally, i.e. without a priori knowledge of the ABI,
> by comparing old and new shared libraries and complaining
> if it thinks their ABI has changed.  It's not clear if
> this would be useful, but we're trying it; we have a script that
> runs dwarfdump -i on shared libraries compiled for debugging.
> It's slow, but if it turns out to be useful, we might reimplement
> it in C.  Has anybody else tried this kind of thing?
> - Dan
> 
> --
> Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Desktop_architects mailing list
> Desktop_architects at lists.osdl.org
> https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop_architects




More information about the Desktop_architects mailing list