PATCH: Add archive support to ELF

[Elena Zannoni]

Jakub Jelinek writes:
 > On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 07:09:10AM -0700, Ian Lance Taylor wrote:
 > > Andrew Cagney <ac131313@redhat.com> writes:
 > > 
 > > > >> Because the whole point of readelf is that it doesn't use the BFD
 > > > >> library.  In a very real sense, the entire readelf program is a
 > > > >> reinvention of the wheel.
 > > > > I don't think so. readelf provides much more and detailed ELF
 > > > > specific
 > > > > information than objdump or nm.
 > > > > What harm will readelf using libbfd do? Is someone planning to remove
 > > > > libbfd one day and still want to keep readelf.
 > > > 
 > > > Something to note here is that GDB would like access to more detailed
 > > > display functions found in readelf.  In particular the dwarf2 print
 > > > code.  Perhaps what's needed is a library that can print detailed
 > > > internals and then have both readelf and objdump use it.
 > > 
 > > The original point of BFD was to provide a generic interface to a
 > > number of different object file formats.
 > > 
 > > As we move to an ELF-only world, I think it becomes appropriate to
 > > write ELF-only tools.  readelf is an example of such a tool, not that
 > > that is what it was intended to be.
 > 
 > See Ulrich's elfutils, where readelf (built on top of libelf) handles
 > archives since the beginning.

Too bad it's not part of the GNU project.

elena



 > 
 > 	Jakub