What is ABI(Application Binary Interface)?

Question

This is what wikipedia says:

In computer software, an application binary interface (ABI) describes the low-level interface between an application (or any type of) program and the operating system or another application.

ABIs cover details such as data type, size, and alignment; the calling convention, which controls how functions' arguments are passed and return values retrieved; the system call numbers and how an application should make system calls to the operating system; and in the case of a complete operating system ABI, the binary format of object files, program libraries and so on. A complete ABI, such as the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard (iBCS), allows a program from one operating system supporting that ABI to run without modifications on any other such system, provided that necessary shared libraries are present, and similar prerequisites are fulfilled.

I guess that an ABI is a convention or standard, and compilers/linkers use this convention to produce object codes. Is that right? If so who made these conventions(companies or some organization)? What was it like when there was no ABIs? Is there documents about these ABIs that we can refer to?

Answer 1

You're correct about the definition of an ABI, up to a point. The classic example is the syscall interface in Linux (and other UNIXes).

They are a standard way for code to request the operating system to carry out certain duties.

As such, they're decided by the people that wrote the OS or, in the case where the syscalls have been added later, by whoever added them (in cases where the OS allows this). For example, the Linux syscall interface on x86 states that you load the syscall number into eax, with other parameters placed in ebx, ecx and so on, depending on the syscall you're making (eax).

Typically, it's not the compiler or linker which do the work of interfacing, rather it's the libraries provided for the language you're using.

Returning to Linux, the GNU C libraries contain code for fopen (for example) which eventually call the relevant syscall to perform the lower level tasks (syscall number 5, open). A list of the syscalls can be found in this PDF file.

Answer 2

Specification is more suitable term than convention, as convention is loose term for widely accepted practice whereas specification is well-defined.

You are right. The specification is made by standardization body. Take a look at POSIX specification which is supported by Windows and compiler/build tool-chains such as gcc assume OS's to adhere by it, and even Linux kernel partially (almost exactly) adheres to it.

Before ABIs? Even today, firmware is hand-crafted as new chips come along for set-top boxes and such other devices having embedded systems.

The documentation is digital logic content in the data-sheet for the chips to be programmed by assembly language and for higher-level language, the cross-compiler tool-chain documentation gives away the assumptions that should be part of ABI.

Answer 3

Well, the concept of ABI was presumably conceived to support the binary compatibility of your program on other operating systems and machine architectures. So, lets suppose that you wrote a program on some operating system distribution running on x86 architecture. Now, for a programmer the most important thing is that this program that you wrote on your machine should be able to run exactly the same on any other machine running on same or different architecture lets say for the sake of discussion that the other machine is running on i386 architecture and this is where the concept of ABI or Application Binary Interfaces comes in. As every machine architecture defines its own way in which the operating system kernal talks to the outside world i.e user-space programs, hence every architecture defines a different set of system calls, machine registers, how those registers are used, how are software interrupts handled by the kernal and so on. ABI is the thing that handles these things for you like compiling, linking, byte ordering and so on. System programmers have had hard luck defining a uniform ABI for same operating systems running on different architectures and that is why every machine architecture has its own and you need to compile your programs in order to confirm to the format those machines have.