assembling output of objdump dissassembly

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Arthur,

> It  appears that the objdump output is quite similar to, but deliberately 
> different  from, the assembly created from compiling a c program with "gcc -S".
> 
> Is  there a mechanism to convert the objdump disassembly output to an 
> assemblable  form?

Apart from doing this by hand, no.

> Or is that a deliberate objdump decision to have the output  
> different, as my desire is inherently unworkable,

It was a deliberate decision but the motive was to make disassembler's 
output be useful to people who want to examine the contents of a binary 
file, not to allow re-assembly.  To this end, more information is 
presented to the user than is needed to just re-assemble the 
disassembled output.

> as modifying the disassembly  
> would change all the branch offsets and cause everything to break?

No, the real problem is coping with relocations.  The disassembled 
output of a file is not just the textual disassembly, but also the 
relocations that are associated with that disassembly.  You would need 
some way to re-install those relocations back into the assembler source, 
possibly regenerating local labels as you go.  A difficult task.

Cheers
   Nick