Re: BFD questions

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian@zembu.com>]

   Date: Sat, 11 Sep 1999 14:10:53 -0500 (EST)
   From: Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@free-expression.org>

      Anyway, I've been reading BFD's manual, and I would like to get some
   more information on the canonical format.  In particular, I want to find
   out how to resolve symbol references in the disassembled code.  This would
   be very useful in decompiling shared libraries or executables that export
   symbols to shared libraries/refer to symbols in shared libraries.  The
   objdump's disassembler appears to only resolve symbol references that are
   in the text section (i.e. function names) even when there are a lot of
   data symbols available.

objdump ought to be able to use other symbols.  Are you disassembling
fully linked executables?  Look at find_symbol_for_address in
binutils/objdump.c.  Note that objdump only has a chance of finding
symbols if sections are at different addresses; that will be true for
a fully linked executable, and as far as I can recall it should be
true for a fully linked shared library.

      By the way, objdump doesn't seem to recognize .dll symbol tables when
   given the -t or -T flags.

This may be the problem.  If BFD can't find the symbol table, objdump
isn't going to be able to use it to resolve references.

      Alternatively, if anyone has a recommendation for docs I can read to
   see how to resolve symbols (i.e. how the code is eventually loaded), I
   would be appreciative.

I doubt there is any documentation you don't already have.

Ian