brew / rank 19772

Install libabigail with Homebrew, apk, dnf, Nix, pacman, apt, zypper

ABI Generic Analysis and Instrumentation Library. Version 2.10 via Homebrew; verified from local package data. Also installable with debian: sudo apt install abigail-doc.

Install command Security notes

install

Additional install commands

macOS

Homebrewverified · 100%

brew install libabigail

local Homebrew formula metadata

Linux

Alpine Linux apkverified · 92%

sudo apk add libabigail

Alpine Linux edge package indexes · libabigail · source: dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org

Fedora dnfverified · 92%

sudo dnf install libabigail

Fedora Rawhide package metadata · libabigail · source: dl.fedoraproject.org

Nixverified · 92%

nix profile install nixpkgs#libabigail

nixpkgs package indexes · pkgs/by-name/li/libabigail/package.nix · source: api.github.com

Arch Linux pacmanverified · 92%

sudo pacman -S libabigail

Arch Linux sync databases · libabigail · source: geo.mirror.pkgbuild.com

Debian aptverified · 92%

sudo apt install abigail-doc

Debian stable package indexes · abigail-doc · source: deb.debian.org

openSUSE zypperverified · 92%

sudo zypper install libabigail-devel

openSUSE Tumbleweed package metadata · libabigail-devel · source: download.opensuse.org

overview

Package summary

ABI Generic Analysis and Instrumentation Library

Project links

Homepage

Commands and aliases

abicompat
abidiff
abidw
abilint
abipkgdiff
kmidiff

history

Project history and usage

libabigail, the ABI Generic Analysis and Instrumentation Library, is a Sourceware project for building, serializing, comparing, and reporting on ABI corpora. Its command-line tools make ABI compatibility checks scriptable for C and C++ shared-library ecosystems.

Project history

The project grew around the idea that ABI-relevant artifacts - types, variables, functions, declarations, and their binary/debug-information representations - should be modeled explicitly and compared mechanically. Sourceware hosts the project page, Git repository, mailing list, bug tracker, tarballs, and generated manuals.

Adoption history

libabigail became important in distribution and platform engineering because ABI breaks are expensive when shared libraries are consumed by many separately built packages. Red Hat engineering articles describe it as a tool for long-term ABI maintenance, and Android carried an external libabigail tree for ABI-related tooling before replacing that tree with a tombstone in 2024.

How it is used

The package exposes tools such as abidiff, abidw, abicompat, abipkgdiff, abilint, and kmidiff. They are used to compare binaries, inspect ABI XML, compare packages, and check kernel module interface differences.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers, libabigail is one of the canonical tools for turning ABI compatibility from tribal knowledge into CI output. It matters when sonames, distro updates, and rebuild policies meet real binary compatibility.

Timeline

2010s: libabigail developed on Sourceware as a library and tool suite for ABI corpus analysis.
2018: Red Hat documented major work across libabigail 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 1.5.
2024-05-20: Red Hat described libabigail-based ABI compatibility testing workflows for binaries across distributions and versions.

Related projects

Related projects include elfutils, DWARF tooling, Linux distribution package QA, Android ABI tooling, and CI systems that gate shared-library compatibility.

Sources

security posture

Risk level: green

library-like package without higher-risk signals.

Risk classifier

green risk · low confidence · appliance

Why

library-like package without higher-risk signals

Signals

metadata:library-like

Install behavior

No Homebrew bottle metadata was recorded.

Recommended review

Before unattended agent use, check whether the tool reads plaintext credentials, writes remote state, publishes artifacts, or shells out to plugins.

executables

Installed executables

Command	Kind	Exposure	Note
`abicompat`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`abidiff`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`abidw`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`abilint`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`abipkgdiff`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.
`kmidiff`	executable	indexed executable	Discovered from the local executable index.

freshness

Version and freshness

These signals separate page generation age, package-manager activity, and upstream release comparison. Version lag is warned only when an evidence URL and comparable versions are present.

page generated2026-08-03

manager version2.10

manager updated

local dataunknown

upstreamnot available

latest detectednot detected

okNo freshness warnings were generated.

install metadata

Package metadata

Package key	brew:libabigail
Version	2.10
Package manager	Homebrew
Homepage	https://sourceware.org/libabigail/
Bottle	not recorded
Service	none declared

source database matches

Other package-manager records

Matches are pulled from external package-manager indexes and kept separate from local Automic Vault package links.

Debian apt95%

abigail-doc 2.6-2

ABI Generic Analysis and Instrumentation Library (documentation)