Re: [PATCH 2/2] binutils: Add new GNU format mode to `size` utility

[Nick Clifton <nickc at redhat dot com>]

Hi Andrew,

> This commit then introduces a new output format for the size tool,
> this new format displays the results in a similar manor to the
> berkeley format, but counts read-only data in the data column, and
> only executable sections are counted in the text column.

I am waiting to see what others think of this new style output before
officially reviewing the patch, but I did have one thought which was:
would it be helpful if the read-only data was displayed in a separate
column, rather than being accumulated into the data column (or the text
column) ?

Also - blowing my own trumpet a little bit here - do you know about the
annocheck tool that currently ships as part of the annobin package in
Fedora ?  It has a feature similar to the size program, except that it
has a few advantages:

  * It only displays the sizes of specific sections, so if you are
    not interested in, say, the data sections then these can be ignored.

  * It displays a cumulative total of all of the sizes at the end of
    its run.

  * It can handle directories, archives and rpms.

So for example:

  % annocheck --section-size=.text /usr/bin
  Section '.text' found in 1497 files, total size: 0x94f0e6f

  % annocheck --section-size=.text /usr/bin --verbose
  [...]
  Section_Size: /usr/bin/secon: .text: 0x1375
  Section_Size: /usr/bin/echo: .text: 0x3722
  Section_Size: /usr/bin/broadwayd: .text: 0x4a45
  Section_Size: Section '.text' found in 1497 files, total size: 0x94f0e6f

  % annocheck --section-size=.text --human --section-size=.rodata binnutils-2.30-48.el6.ppc64.rpm 
  Section_Size: Section '.rodata' found in 20 files, total size: 2Mb
  Section_Size: Section '.text' found in 20 files, total size: 10Mb

Cheers
  Nick