objdump GUI

A professional desktop front-end for GNU binutils objdump, built with PySide6 (Qt 6). It exposes every objdump option through an organized, searchable panel, builds the command line live, runs it asynchronously, and renders the output with syntax highlighting plus navigable section/symbol indexes.

Highlights

• Every option, grouped & searchable — disassembly, headers, symbols, relocations, section contents, DWARF, CTF/SFrame, demangling, source correlation, and display formatting. The panel is generated from a single declarative catalogue (options.py), so it always matches the flags.
• Capability probing — target formats, architectures, demangle styles and architecture-specific -M disassembler options are read from your installed objdump at startup, so it is correct across binutils versions and cross toolchains.
• Aligned disassembly view (View ▸ Aligned, Ctrl+Shift+A) — a parsed, column-aligned rendering of the disassembly: addresses, mnemonics and operands line up, raw byte columns are optional, functions are separated by blank lines, and operands are comma-spaced. It is a pure display transform on the last run's output (no re-run), only touches lines it recognizes as labels/ instructions, and passes everything else (banners, -S source, symbol tables) through verbatim. Toggle back to raw objdump text any time.
• Live command preview — see and copy the exact objdump … command as you toggle options.
• Asynchronous, cancellable runs — large disassemblies never freeze the UI; Run is disabled while busy and Cancel kills the process.
• Syntax-highlighted output with an incremental find bar (plain / case-sensitive / regex, match count, wrap-around). ANSI color from --disassembler-color is stripped automatically.
• Section & Symbol navigators — model/view tables (fast on huge symbol tables; parsing runs off the UI thread) with substring filter and numeric hex sorting; double-click a symbol to jump to it, or right-click to re-run with --disassemble=<sym>.
• In-disassembly navigation — Ctrl+click a <symbol>/call target to follow it to its definition (or Edit ▸ Follow Symbol, Ctrl+]), and Go to Address (Ctrl+G) jumps to any instruction by address.
• Option presets & session memory — save/load named option sets (Presets menu); window/dock layout and last-used options persist across sessions.
• Export — raw output, aligned output, or syntax-highlighted HTML.
• Binary compare (Tools ▸ Compare With Binary) — unified, color-coded diff of two binaries' aligned disassembly; Section Hex Dump views any section's bytes/ASCII.
• Real --disassembler-color — objdump's ANSI colors are rendered (in raw view) instead of stripped; the aligned view uses the built-in highlighter.
• Address modes — the aligned view handles --no-addresses and --prefix-addresses layouts as well as the default.
• Cross-toolchain / AVR support — GNU objdump backends on your PATH (avr-objdump, arm-none-eabi-objdump, aarch64-linux-gnu-objdump, …) are auto-discovered and listed under File ▸ Backend Toolchain; switch backend in one click (or use OBJDUMP= / --objdump=). The whole pipeline adapts to the selected target: options/architectures are re-probed, the disassembly highlighter switches register sets (x86 %rax…, AVR r0–r31/X/Y/Z, ARM/AArch64 r0…/x0…/sp/lr/wzr, RISC-V a0…/ra/sp/fa0…), and the aligned view normalizes each target's field layout — AVR/ARM/AArch64/RISC-V separate mnemonic⟶operands⟶comment with tabs and pack opcode bytes differently (x86/AVR as spaced pairs 48 89 e5, ARM/AArch64 as contiguous words 4408). Non-GNU variants (llvm-objdump, eu-objdump) are excluded since the GUI targets GNU objdump's option set. (RISC-V register names were validated against real disassembly tokens; install a GNU riscv*-objdump and it is auto-discovered.)
• Dark/light themes, recent files, save output, dockable/tabbed panels.

Requirements

• Python ≥ 3.10
• PySide6 ≥ 6.5
• GNU binutils objdump on PATH (or pointed to explicitly)

Run

./run.sh                       # from a checkout
./run.sh /bin/ls               # open a file immediately
OBJDUMP=avr-objdump ./run.sh firmware.elf      # AVR (or pick it in the menu)
OBJDUMP=arm-none-eabi-objdump ./run.sh fw.elf
python3 -m objdump_gui --objdump=/usr/bin/objdump a.out

Or install it:

pip install -e .
objdump-gui /bin/ls

Desktop integration (optional)

install -Dm644 packaging/objdump-gui.svg ~/.local/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/objdump-gui.svg
install -Dm644 packaging/objdump-gui.desktop ~/.local/share/applications/objdump-gui.desktop

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest                 # 68 hermetic tests (QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen, no toolchain needed)
ruff check .           # lint
mypy                   # type-check the pure-logic modules
bandit -c pyproject.toml -r objdump_gui

CI (GitHub Actions, .github/workflows/ci.yml) runs all four on every push/PR.

Layout

Area	Contents
Center	Syntax-highlighted output + find bar; command preview bar below
Right dock	Options (searchable) / Disassembler Options (-M) (tabbed)
Left docks	Sections and Symbols navigators (filterable)
Bottom dock	Messages / stderr log

Module map

File	Responsibility
introspect.py	Probe the objdump binary for targets/arches/options
options.py	Declarative catalogue of every option + argv builders
runner.py	Async (QProcess) execution, cancellable
parsers.py	Tolerant parsing for the section/symbol tables; ANSI strip
prettyprint.py	Reformat disassembly into aligned, readable columns
ansi.py	Parse objdump's ANSI SGR color output into text formats
widgets/diff_dialog.py	Binary-diff and hex-dump viewer dialogs
highlight.py	Disassembly syntax highlighter (dark/light)
widgets/options_panel.py	Auto-generated options UI + command builder
widgets/navigators.py	Sections & Symbols tables
widgets/output_view.py	Output viewer + incremental find
main_window.py	Wiring: menus, toolbar, docks, run lifecycle
app.py	Bootstrap