v0.2.0

ixdiff can now compare binaries on nearly every architecture Go targets.

Seven new architectures

This release adds instruction-level diffing for 386, arm (32-bit), riscv64, ppc64/ppc64le, s390x, loong64, and wasm — joining the existing amd64 and arm64 support. Each one gets full operand normalization, so address shifts between builds are masked out and only real code changes show up in the diff. 386, arm, riscv64, and loong64 also get the relocation-only fast path, which classifies most layout-shift noise without disassembling at all.

The one holdout is mips: there is no pure-Go disassembler for it yet (golang/go#19158 tracks adding one to x/arch). Follow #9 if you need it.

Sharper diffs

• The amd64 fast path now verifies rip-relative references against the symbol table, so a defer or function value retargeted to a different function is reported as a real change instead of being mistaken for relocation noise.
• --mask-sp now knows each architecture's stack pointer (R1 on ppc64, R15 on s390x, and friends), and --blocks splits blocks correctly everywhere — including wasm.

Sturdier loaders

The ELF, Mach-O, PE, and wasm loaders now reject malformed and hostile inputs gracefully instead of hanging or panicking, and concurrent disassembly no longer races inside the x/arch decoders. The test suite grew accordingly: every architecture runs through the full pipeline, and a property-based harness cross-checks the fast path against full analysis on real cross-compiled binaries.

Binaries below are for linux, macOS, and windows on amd64/arm64 — or go install github.com/loov/ixdiff@v0.2.0.

v0.1.0

ixdiff compares the assembly of two binaries to show how the generated
code differs: which functions changed, by how much, and what the
instruction-level differences are.

First release.

Highlights

• Summary report: function counts, text size delta, opcode histogram,
  per-package rollup, and top-N tables (--top, --sort, --filter).
• Per-function assembly diffs (--fn, repeatable, substring matching
  with suggestions), unified or two-column (--side-by-side), with
  hunks, address columns, and changed-operand emphasis on terminals.
• Relocation-aware: functions whose bytes differ only because code or
  data moved are counted separately and excluded from statistics; on
  amd64 and arm64 most are classified without disassembly, so large
  binaries compare in well under a second per 100MB.
• Normalization keeps diffs meaningful: call targets symbolized,
  branch labels alignment-derived, address-valued operands masked,
  renamed functions re-paired. Real immediates, registers, and stack
  offsets still diff (--mask-sp to ignore frame-size shifts).
• --blocks matches basic blocks first, tolerating block reordering
  (e.g. PGO builds).
• --json for machine-readable reports.

Pure Go (debug/elf, debug/macho, debug/pe, golang.org/x/arch),
no objdump needed. ELF, Mach-O, and PE on amd64 and arm64; Go binaries
get exact function ranges from the pclntab even when stripped.

Install

go install github.com/loov/ixdiff@v0.1.0

or use the attached prebuilt binaries for linux, macOS, and Windows.