Unexpected differences when using objdiff.exe to compare two RTS libraries

You can ignore these differences in the __TI_ICODE section.  And I'll show you how to configure objdiff to do that.  But, first, I'm sure you want to know why these differences can be ignored.  To explain that, I need to establish some background.

I-code stands for intermediate code.  Compiling a file proceeds in multiple stages.  The representation of the source between these stages is the intermediate code.  It is a binary file.  The format is not an industry standard, but specific to TI compilers. 

When the RTS library is built, the I-code is embedded in it.  It is contained in the section named __TI_ICODE.  The idea was take advantage of it with yet to be implemented optimization levels.  That never happened for the C6000 compiler.  This __TI_ICODE section is never used.  Future releases do not embed I-code in the RTS object files. 

When mklib builds the library, it creates a temporary directory, copies all the C source and header files into that temp directory, then performs all of the builds there.  The I-code puts the full path to the source file in a few different places.  When you run mklib multiple times, different temporary directories are created, used, then deleted. 

The net effect is that the __TI_ICODE section, from different invocations of mklib, contains the full path to different temporary directories.  The differences among these paths are what you see when you use objdiff. 

Since the __TI_ICODE section is not used, you can ignore it in the comparison.  Here is how to do that.  Create a text file with contents like this:

# config.txt

SKIP_BY_NAME = __TI_ICODE  # skip the section named __TI_ICODE

Then add --config_file=config.txt to the objdiff command line. 

Thanks and regards,

-George