ldconfig - Portable Rust Implementation

A Rust implementation of ldconfig for building and managing glibc ld.so.cache files.

This library provides both a command-line tool and a high-level API for:

• Reading and exploring ld.so.cache files
• Parsing ld.so.conf configuration files
• Building cache files by scanning library directories
• Writing cache files to disk

Supported Architectures

This implementation supports the following architectures with proper glibc cache flags:

• x86-64 (64-bit Intel/AMD) - FLAG_X8664_LIB64
• AArch64 (ARM 64-bit) - FLAG_AARCH64_LIB64
• RISC-V 64-bit (lp64d ABI with double-precision FP) - FLAG_RISCV_FLOAT_ABI_DOUBLE
• PowerPC 64-bit - FLAG_POWERPC_LIB64
• i686 (32-bit x86) - Base ELF flag
• ARM (32-bit) - FLAG_ARM_LIBHF for hard-float, base flag for soft-float

All architecture flags match the official glibc ldconfig implementation.

Command-Line Usage

Print cache contents

# Print the system cache
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -p

# Print a specific cache file
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -p -C /path/to/cache

Build/update cache

# Update system cache
cargo run --bin ldconfig

# Build cache for a specific root (useful for cross-compilation)
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -r /path/to/sysroot

# Write to a different cache file (don't overwrite system cache)
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -r test-root -C test.cache

Library Usage

Add to your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
ldconfig = "0.1"

Read and display a cache

use ldconfig::Cache;

let cache = Cache::from_file("/etc/ld.so.cache")?;

// Display the entire cache (uses Display trait)
println!("{}", cache);

// Or iterate over entries
for entry in cache.entries().take(5) {
    println!("{} => {}", entry.soname, entry.path);
}

// Find specific libraries
for entry in cache.find("libc") {
    println!("Found: {} at {}", entry.soname, entry.path);
}

Build and write a cache

use ldconfig::{SearchPaths, Cache};
use camino::Utf8Path;

// Parse ld.so.conf
let search_paths = SearchPaths::from_file("/etc/ld.so.conf", None)?;

// Build cache by scanning directories
let cache = Cache::builder()
    .prefix(Utf8Path::new("/"))
    .build(&search_paths)?;

// Write to file
cache.write_to_file("/etc/ld.so.cache")?;

Examples

The examples/ directory contains complete working examples:

# Build a cache from a sysroot
cargo run --example build_cache -- -r test-root -C test.cache

# Read and query a cache file
cargo run --example test_cache_read -- test.cache

# Compare two caches (with ld-so-cache cross-validation)
cargo run --example compare_caches -- our.cache reference.cache

API Overview

Cache - Reading and writing caches

pub struct Cache { ... }

impl Cache {
    pub fn from_file(path: impl AsRef<Path>) -> Result<Self, Error>;
    pub fn from_bytes(data: &[u8]) -> Result<Self, Error>;
    pub fn entries(&self) -> CacheEntries<'_>;  // Iterator
    pub fn find(&self, name: &str) -> impl Iterator<Item = CacheEntry>;
    pub fn info(&self) -> CacheInfo;
    pub fn write_to_file(&self, path: impl AsRef<Path>) -> Result<(), Error>;
}

impl fmt::Display for Cache { ... }

SearchPaths - Configuration parsing

pub struct SearchPaths { ... }

impl SearchPaths {
    pub fn from_file(path: impl AsRef<Utf8Path>, prefix: Option<&Utf8Path>) -> Result<Self, Error>;
    pub fn new(directories: Vec<Utf8PathBuf>) -> Self;

    // Also implements Deref<Target = [Utf8PathBuf]> for transparent slice access
}

Testing

The library includes comprehensive testing through examples since it is fairly cumbersome to automate.

You may download any minimal docker image sporting glibc or use chroot-stages to download a Gentoo stage3

# Test with AArch64 libraries
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -r <stage3-arm64> -C test-aarch64.cache -v

# Test with RISC-V libraries
cargo run --bin ldconfig -- -r <stage3-rv64_lp64d> -C test-riscv.cache -v

# Compare against reference implementation
cargo run --example compare_caches -- test-aarch64.cache <stage3-arm64>/etc/ld.so.cache

The compare_caches example uses the ld-so-cache crate for cross-validation to ensure compatibility with existing tools.

Development

This code was written with the assistance of:

• Claude - AI assistant by Anthropic
• mistral-vibe - AI assistant by Mistral

The code is manually reviewed and should not contain hallucination on release, but single commits in the history can be nonsensical.

License

MIT