Kickers of ELF

This distribution is a collection of programs that are generally unrelated, except in that they all deal with the ELF file format.

The main purpose of these programs is to be illustrative and educational -- to help fellow programmers understand the ELF file format and something of how it works under the Linux platform.

Each program is independent. There is no shared code between them, and in fact they all take slightly different approaches to handling ELF files.

The distribution includes:

• sstrip: a small utility that removes a few bytes from an executable that strip leaves behind.
• rebind: a small utility that alters the binding of selected symbols in an object file.
• elfls: a utility that displays an ELF file's program and/or section header tables, which serve as a kind of global roadmap to the file's contents.
• elftoc: a program that takes an ELF file and generates C code that defines a structure with the same memory image, using the structures and preprocessor symbols defined in <linux/elf.h>.
• ebfc: a compiler for a tiny programming language. The compiler can generate ELF executables, object files, and shared libraries.
• The distribution also contains my collection of tiny ELF executables.

• May 2001: Version 2.0a
  • A couple of simple yet important bug fixes.
• April 2001: Version 2.0
  • Rewrite of several parts of elftoc.
  • elftoc and elfls updated to be aware of new ELF structures.
• March 2001
  • New program rebind added to the collection.
  • Two new tiny programs, others improved.
  • Bug fix in elftoc and some of the READMEs.
• February 2001
  • Tiny programs updated for 2.2.17-compatibility.
• January 2001
  • -W option removed from the ebfc Makefile (left in as an oversight).
  • keepalive.asm added to the tiny collection.
  • New feature added to ebfc -- namely, the acceptance of compressed source files.
• August 2000
  • Reordering of some header file inclusions and removal of -W from the gcc options in some of the Makefiles, to accommodate changes made to the 2.2 kernel and a new (spurious in this case) warning added to gcc 2.95.
  • ls.asm added to the tiny collection.
• July 1999
  • Initial release.

All the programs in this distribution are available under the GNU General Public License. Share and Enjoy. Contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Software
Brian Raiter
Muppetlabs