Chris Lamb: >> Could these offset differences in readelf(1) output be ignored, at least >> optionally? > > Love the idea! However, my gut cautions against ignoring them. even with an > option. > > Perhaps there is a perfect solution whereby we would normalise these two > offsets to — making it up here! — relative values, but simply need to > nclude that we have done that once in the diff. That way, we have a) still > captured the underlying issue, b) reduced the noise, and c) avoided a > cumbersome option flag.
One idea that crossed my mind at some point that might be able to solve this as well: be able to record other kinds of differences than just line-oriented ones. Initially, I thought of this as a way to add image comparison as I felt sad not knowing any free software that could easily provide similar features to what GitHub offers [1]. But why stop with images? In the precise case of the readelf output, having line-oriented diff means we are carrying around a useless and confusing information: the line numbers are not helpful in anyway to locate and undrstand the differences. But what if we could replace the line numbers by the instruction addresses? Then the noise mentioned by Daniel disappears. Meanwhile, the actual output will become even more relevant. Such an approach would require some structural changes to the code, but could have benefits on many fronts. [1]: https://help.github.com/articles/rendering-and-diffing-images/ Hope that's any useful, -- Lunar .''`. lunar at debian.org : :Ⓐ : # apt-get install anarchism `. `'` `-
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