Re: [PATCH] lib: add get/set link settings interface

[Dodji Seketeli <dodji@redhat.com>]

Hello,

> On Fri, Apr 5, 2024 at 2:55 AM Tyler Retzlaff

[...]

>> i'm jealous we don't have libabigail on windows, so helpful.

Heh, thank you for the kind words.

David Marchand <david.marchand@redhat.com> writes:

[...]

> libabigail is written in C++ and relies on the elfutils and libxml2
> libraries.

That is correct.  Thank you for chiming in, David.

> I am unclear about what binary format is used in Windows... so I am
> not sure how much work would be required to have it on Windows.

So for a little bit of context, libabigail constructs its own internal
representation (IR) of the artifacts relevant to perform the analysis.
The middle-end of the system then performs the needed analysis on that
IR.

The binary format itself it handled by a front-end.  Today, we have
front-ends that reads the ELF format and constructs the IR and hands it
over to the middle end.

One could very well imagine a new front-end that knows how to read the
Portable Executable (PE) format that is used on Windows, along with its
accompanying debug information.

Luckily, I've written articles[1][2] that explains how libabigail
recently switched to having a multi-front-end architecture that we have
used to support alternative debug information formats like CTF[3] and
BTF.

In light of that, adding a new PE front-end would be "just work to do",
I would think.  And I would obviously not be opposed to helping such a
project and merging the result in the end.

As for any feature request, I would encourage potentially interested
parties to file an "enhancement request" on the bug tracker of the
project[4].

> That's more something to discuss with Dodji :-).

Thanks for the plug ;-)

I hope this helps.

[1]: https://developers.redhat.com/articles/2023/01/05/libabigail-multiple-debugging-formats#the_resulting_multi_front_end_architecture
[2]: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/bpf-type-format-support-libabigail-23
[3]: https://lwn.net/Articles/795384/
[4]: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=libabigail

Cheers,

-- 
		Dodji