Hey, I wrote objcopy and objdump as debugging tools for developing bfd targets when I was designing bfd. Neither was (originally) intended as a production tool. OK I still use them myself, and I haven’t looked at the bfd source code in almost 30 years.
I forget who came up with the tool chain target names, which I think was your real complaint, though I remember when. Perhaps Ian Taylor (later author of gold, which was notable for, among other things, not using bfd).
Objdump should have a feature to generate assembly or c code for an arbitrary blob (with correct byte swap, if needed, of course).
I always try to be respectful towards other software in my writing and I fell short this time. I hope you'll accept my sincere apologies!
> the tool chain target names, which I think was your real complaint
Yes, this was solely what I was referring to (slightly thoughtlessly) as "ugly", and even then only in the sense of "where did those magic names come from?" I certainly wasn't referring to objcopy itself!
don't worry: I'm not actually insulted. I just think it's funny that something intended for development debugging turn out to be actually useful (as I said I still use them too, and not for debugging bfd).
Hey, I wrote objcopy and objdump as debugging tools for developing bfd targets when I was designing bfd. Neither was (originally) intended as a production tool. OK I still use them myself, and I haven’t looked at the bfd source code in almost 30 years.
I forget who came up with the tool chain target names, which I think was your real complaint, though I remember when. Perhaps Ian Taylor (later author of gold, which was notable for, among other things, not using bfd).
Objdump should have a feature to generate assembly or c code for an arbitrary blob (with correct byte swap, if needed, of course).