GNU Binary Utilities

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The GNU Binutils is a collection of programming tools for the manipulation of object code in various object file formats. The current versions were originally written by programmers at Cygnus Solutions using the BFD library. They are typically used in conjunction with GCC, make and GDB.

The binutils include the following commands:

as - assembler
ld - linker
addr2line - convert address to file and line
ar - create, modify, and extract from archives
c++filt - demangling filter for C++ symbols
nm - list symbols in object files
objcopy - copy object files, possibly making changes
objdump - dump information about object files
ranlib - generate indexes for archives
readelf - display content of ELF files
size - list total and section sizes
strings - list printable strings
strip - remove symbols from an object file
gprof - Profiler

Originally the package consisted of only the minor utilities, but later the GNU Assembler (GAS) and GNU Linker (GLD) were included in releases, since their functionality is so closely related.

Most of the binutils are rather simple programs. Most of the complexity is encapsulated in the BFD and libopcodes libraries that they share.

The original BFD versions were written by David Henkel-Wallace and Steve Chamberlain. Past maintainers have included Ken Raeburn and Ian Lance Taylor. As of 2005 the current maintainer is Nick Clifton.

External links

[Official GNU Binary Utilities page]
[sourceware.org GNU binutils page]
[GNU binutils forum] - hosted by [Nabble] archiving binutils mailing lists into a searchable forum.

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GNU Binary Utilities

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