******* This file is getting obsolete. RDOFF documentation is written in Texinfo now. Directory doc/ contains Texinfo source (rdoff.texi) and makefile for creating different output formats (info, HTML, PostScript and PDF). ******* RDOFF Utilities, version 0.3.2 ============================== The files contained in this directory are the C source code of a set of tools (and general purpose library files) for the manipulation of RDOFF version 2 object files. Note that these programs (with the exception of 'rdfdump') will NOT work with version 1 object files. Version 1 of RDOFF is no longer supported. There is also a 'doc' directory with 'v1-v2' file, which documents the differences between RDOFF 1 and 2, and an 'rdoff2.texi' (texinfo source), with complete documentation for the new format. Here is a brief summary of the programs' usage: rdfdump ======= This tool prints a list of the header records in an RDOFF object in human-readable form, and optionally prints a hex dump of the contents of the segments. Usage: rdfdump [-v] filename The -v flag specifies that the hex dump (see above) should be printed. Changes from previous versions: * rdfdump supports both version 1 and 2 of RDOFF. * rdfdump now gives warnings if the RDOFF2 format is violated (it looks for incorrect lengths for header records, and checks the overall length count at the start of the file) ldrdf ===== This tool is a version of unix 'ld' (or DOS 'link') for use with RDOFF files. It is capable of linking RDOFF objects, and libraries produced with the 'rdlib' utility discussed below. In normal usage, its command line takes the form: ldrdf [-o output-file] object files [-llibrary ...] Modules in libraries are not linked to the program unless they are referred to. Most of its options are not implemented, but those that are are listed here: -2 redirect all output from stderr to stdout. It is useful for some systems which don't have such a redirection in shell (e.g. DOS). -v increase verbosity level. Currently 4 verbosity levels are available: default (which only prints error information), normal (which prints information about the produced object, -v), medium (which prints information about what the program is doing, -v -v) and high (which prints all available information, -v -v -v). -a change alignment value to which multiple segments combigned into a single segment should be aligned (must be either 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 or 256. Default is 16). -s strip exported symbols from output file. Symbols marked as SYM_GLOBAL are never stripped. -x warn about unresolved symbols. -xe issue an error when at least one symbol is unresolved. -o name write output to file . The default output filename is 'aout.rdx'. -j path specify search path for object files. Default path is a current directory. -L path specify search path for libraries. Default path is a current directory. -g file embed 'file' as a first header record with type 'generic'. rdx === This program simply loads and executes an RDOFF object, by calling '_main', which it expects to be a C-style function, which will accept two parameters, argc and argv in normal C style. rdflib ====== This program creates a library file for use with ldrdf. It is supplied with a shell script 'makelib' which should probably be used to create libraries. Usage: rdflib command library [optional arguments] Valid commands are: c Create (or truncate) the library a Add a module (requires a filename and a name to give the module, ie 'rdflib a libc.rdl strcpy.rdf strcpy' puts the file 'strcpy.rdf' into 'libc.rdl', and calls it 'strcpy'. x Extract (arguments are the opposite to the 'a' command, ie you'd do 'rdflib x libc.rdl strcpy strcpy.rdf to get a copy of strcpy.rdf back out again...) t List modules in the library d Delete modules from library r Replace a module in library with a new file Library functions ================= The files 'rdoff.c', 'rdoff.h', 'rdfload.c' and 'rdfload.h' contain code which you may find useful. They retain the same interface as the previous version, so any code that used them previously should still work OK (maybe). 'rdoff.c' contains at the top a line: #define STRICT_ERRORS Comment this line out if you wish to use record types other than the 7 predefined types; it will then not report such records as an error, but accept them gracefully, and read them byte for byte into a 'generic record' (see the definition of GenericRec in 'rdoff.h'). If you are using these functions to write RDF modules (rather than just reading them), then please note the existance of a new function 'rdfaddsegment(rdf_headerbuf,long)'. This must be called once for each segment in your object, to tell the header writing functions how long the segment is. BUGS ==== This product has recently undergone a major revision, and as such there are probably several bugs left over from the testing phase (although the previous version had quite a few that have now been fixed!). Could you please report any bugs to maintainers at the addresses below, including the following information: - A description of the bug - What you think the program should be doing - Which programs you are using - Which operating system you are using, and which C compiler was used to compile the programs (or state that the pre-compiled versions were used). - If appropriate, any of the following: * source code (preferably cut down to a minimum that will still assemble and show the bug) * the output of rdfdump on produced modules (or send the module if the problem is in code generated) * exact descriptions of error messages/symptoms/etc TODO ==== There are still various things unimplemented that we would like to add. If you want to find out what these are, search near the top of each *.c file for a comment containing the word 'TODO'. A brief list is given here: - Improve the performace of ldrdf (there are several enhancements I can think of that wouldn't be too hard to add) - Stop assuming that we're on a little endian machine - Check for more bugs MAINTAINERS =========== Yuri Zaporozhets - primary maintainer Julian Hall - original designer and author