Spin like mad between:
- standards
- high level generators. We use the assembler
asand linkerld. - hexdumps
- file decompilers. We use
readelf. It makes it faster to read the ELF file by turning it into human readable output. But you must have seen one byte-by-byte example first, and think howreadelfoutput maps to the standard. - low-level generators: stand-alone libraries that let you control every field of the ELF files you generated. github.com/BR903/ELFkickers, github.com/sqall01/ZwoELF and many more on GitHub.
- consumer: the
execsystem call of the Linux kernel can parse ELF files to starts processes: github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.11/fs/binfmt_elf.c, stackoverflow.com/questions/8352535/how-does-kernel-get-an-executable-binary-file-running-under-linux/31394861#31394861
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