abilint(1) — Linux manual page

NAME \| INVOCATION \| OPTIONS \| Author \| Copyright \| COLOPHON

ABILINT(1)                      Libabigail                     ABILINT(1)

NAME top

       abilint - validate an abigail ABI representation

       abilint parses the native XML representation of an ABI as emitted
       by abidw <>.  Once it has parsed the XML representation of the
       ABI, abilint builds and in-memory model from it.  It then tries to
       save it back to an XML form, to standard output.  If that
       read-write operation succeeds chances are the input XML ABI
       representation is meaningful.

       Note that the main intent of this tool to help debugging issues in
       the underlying Libabigail library.

       Note also that abilint can also read an ELF
       <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format>
       input file, build the in-memory model for its ABI, and serialize
       that model back into XML to standard output.  In that case, the
       ELF <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format>
       input file must be accompanied with its debug information in the
       DWARF <http://www.dwarfstd.org> format.

INVOCATION top

          abilint [options] [<abi-file1>]

OPTIONS top

          • --annotate

            Annotate the ABIXML output with comments above most elements.
            The comments are made of the pretty-printed form of types,
            declaration or even ELF symbols.  The purpose is to make the
            ABIXML output more human-readable for debugging or
            documenting purposes.

          • --ctf

            Extract ABI information from CTF debug information, if
            present in the given object.

          • --debug-info-dir <path>

            When reading an ELF
            <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable_and_Linkable_Format>
            input file which debug information is split out into a
            separate file, this options tells abilint where to find that
            separate debug information file.

            Note that path must point to the root directory under which
            the debug information is arranged in a tree-like manner.
            Under Red Hat based systems, that directory is usually
            <root>/usr/lib/debug.

            Note also that this option is not mandatory for split debug
            information installed by your system's package manager
            because then abidiff knows where to find it.

          • --diff

            For XML inputs, perform a text diff between the input and the
            memory model saved back to disk.  This can help to spot
            issues in the handling of the XML format by the underlying
            Libabigail library.

          • --header-file | --hf <header-file-path>

            Specifies where to find one of the public headers of the abi
            file that the tool has to consider.  The tool will thus
            filter out types that are not defined in public headers.

          • --headers-dir | --hd <headers-directory-path-1>

            Specifies where to find the public headers of the first
            shared library that the tool has to consider.  The tool will
            thus filter out types that are not defined in public headers.

          • --help

            Display a short help message and exits.

          • --noout

            Do not display anything on standard output.  The return code
            of the command is the only way to know if the command
            succeeded.

          • --suppressions | suppr
            <path-to-suppression-specifications-file>

            Use a suppression specification <#suppr-spec-label> file
            located at path-to-suppression-specifications-file.  Note
            that this option can appear multiple times on the command
            line.  In that case, all of the provided suppression
            specification files are taken into account.  ABI artifacts
            matched by the suppression specifications are suppressed from
            the output of this tool.

          • --stdin | --

            Read the input content from standard input.

          • --tu

            Expect the input XML to represent a single translation unit.

          • --verbose

            Shows verbose messages about internal stuff.  This is used to
            debug the tool and its underlying library.

          • --version | -v

            Display the version of the program and exit.

Author top

       Dodji Seketeli

Copyright top

       2014-2025, Red Hat, Inc.

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the libabigail (ABI Generic Analysis and
       Instrumentation Library) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨https://sourceware.org/libabigail/⟩.  If you have
       a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://sourceware.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=libabigail⟩.
       This page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://sourceware.org/git/libabigail.git⟩ on 2026-08-04.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the
       repository was 2026-07-31.)  If you discover any rendering
       problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
       a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
       corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
       (which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org

                               Aug 03, 2026                    ABILINT(1)