Firmware diffing for engineers who need answers, not just bytes.
firmdiff helps engineers compare firmware builds and explain what actually changed.
It is designed for embedded systems engineers dealing with:
- non-reproducible builds
- unexplained binary differences
- mysterious firmware regressions
- toolchain instability
- build system drift
Instead of diffing hex dumps, firmdiff explains the difference.
Embedded firmware builds often change even when the source code does not.
Engineers frequently discover:
- identical builds produce different binaries
- compiler upgrades change output
- link ordering changes addresses
- toolchains inject timestamps
- build flags drift over time
firmdiff helps you detect and explain these problems.
go install github.com/lostbinarylabs/firmdiff/cmd/firmdiff@latest
or build locally
git clone https://github.com/lostbinarylabs/firmdiff
cd firmdiff
go build ./cmd/firmdiff
Quick start
Run firmdiff on a firmware project:
firmdiff run --src examples/hello_firmdiff
Example output:
Running build A...
Running build B...
Comparing firmware...
Binary difference detected
Possible causes:
- timestamp embedded in binary
- object file order change
- linker script variation
Commands
Command Description
firmdiff run perform firmware build comparison
firmdiff explain analyse and explain binary differences
firmdiff report produce markdown diff report
firmdiff sweep run extended analysis
Example projects
See the examples/ directory for runnable demos.
Documentation
Full documentation lives in the docs/ folder.
Getting Started
Command Guide
Architecture
Troubleshooting
Roadmap
Planned features include:
ELF symbol diffing
linker map analysis
reproducible build verification
CI integration
Contributing
Contributions are welcome.
Please read:
CONTRIBUTING.md