Re: Replacement for "objdump -d -l"?

["Richard Earnshaw (lists)" <Richard.Earnshaw@arm.com>]

On 15/08/2023 15:15, Nick Clifton via Binutils wrote:
> Hi ASSI,
> 
>> Lastly, it seem brittle to parse the output as clearly it is meant to be
>> human readable and might change in future versions
> 
> Correct.
> 
>> (aside from the fact
>> there doesn't seem to be a documentation of the current format for
>> crying out loud).
> 
> Because the output format has evolved rather than being specified by a 
> standard.
> 
> But to be fair, the output format does not change that much, and
> it could be documented if there really was a need.
> 
> 
>> I'd be much more content with a format that was
>> designed to be machine readable and fully documented (again llvm has an
>> objdump that produces YAML).  Is there something like that in binutils I
>> can use?
> 
> No, but it would be nice to have.
> 
> A fixed, extensible, machine readable output format would be much 
> appreciated
> as a new feature for objdump.  All it really needs is someone with the 
> time,
> knowledge and motivation to write it.
> 
> Cheers
>    Nick
> 

I think if we were ever to specify a machine-readable format for the 
output, we'd probably want to use some structured dumping format, rather 
than try to specify the current format more precisely.  That would avoid 
a lot of parsing problems for readers and also give us a chance of being 
able to add new features without breaking every tool that reads the output.

R.