What is an application binary interface (ABI)?

One easy way to understand "ABI" is to compare it to "API".

You are already familiar with the concept of an API. If you want to use the features of, say, some library or your OS, you will program against an API. The API consists of data types/structures, constants, functions, etc that you can use in your code to access the functionality of that external component.

An ABI is very similar. Think of it as the compiled version of an API (or as an API on the machine-language level). When you write source code, you access the library through an API. Once the code is compiled, your application accesses the binary data in the library through the ABI. The ABI defines the structures and methods that your compiled application will use to access the external library (just like the API did), only on a lower level. Your API defines the order in which you pass arguments to a function. Your ABI defines the mechanics of how these arguments are passed (registers, stack, etc.). Your API defines which functions are part of your library. Your ABI defines how your code is stored inside the library file, so that any program using your library can locate the desired function and execute it.

ABIs are important when it comes to applications that use external libraries. Libraries are full of code and other resources, but your program has to know how to locate what it needs inside the library file. Your ABI defines how the contents of a library are stored inside the file, and your program uses the ABI to search through the file and find what it needs. If everything in your system conforms to the same ABI, then any program is able to work with any library file, no matter who created them. Linux and Windows use different ABIs, so a Windows program won't know how to access a library compiled for Linux.

Sometimes, ABI changes are unavoidable. When this happens, any programs that use that library will not work unless they are re-compiled to use the new version of the library. If the ABI changes but the API does not, then the old and new library versions are sometimes called "source compatible". This implies that while a program compiled for one library version will not work with the other, source code written for one will work for the other if re-compiled.

For this reason, developers tend to try to keep their ABI stable (to minimize disruption). Keeping an ABI stable means not changing function interfaces (return type and number, types, and order of arguments), definitions of data types or data structures, defined constants, etc. New functions and data types can be added, but existing ones must stay the same. If, for instance, your library uses 32-bit integers to indicate the offset of a function and you switch to 64-bit integers, then already-compiled code that uses that library will not be accessing that field (or any following it) correctly. Accessing data structure members gets converted into memory addresses and offsets during compilation and if the data structure changes, then these offsets will not point to what the code is expecting them to point to and the results are unpredictable at best.

An ABI isn't necessarily something you will explicitly provide unless you are doing very low-level systems design work. It isn't language-specific either, since (for example) a C application and a Pascal application can use the same ABI after they are compiled.

Edit: Regarding your question about the chapters regarding the ELF file format in the SysV ABI docs: The reason this information is included is because the ELF format defines the interface between operating system and application. When you tell the OS to run a program, it expects the program to be formatted in a certain way and (for example) expects the first section of the binary to be an ELF header containing certain information at specific memory offsets. This is how the application communicates important information about itself to the operating system. If you build a program in a non-ELF binary format (such as a.out or PE), then an OS that expects ELF-formatted applications will not be able to interpret the binary file or run the application. This is one big reason why Windows apps cannot be run directly on a Linux machine (or vice versa) without being either re-compiled or run inside some type of emulation layer that can translate from one binary format to another.

IIRC, Windows currently uses the Portable Executable (or, PE) format. There are links in the "external links" section of that Wikipedia page with more information about the PE format.

Also, regarding your note about C++ name mangling: When locating a function in a library file, the function is typically looked up by name. C++ allows you to overload function names, so name alone is not sufficient to identify a function. C++ compilers have their own ways of dealing with this internally, called name mangling. An ABI can define a standard way of encoding the name of a function so that programs built with a different language or compiler can locate what they need. When you use extern "c" in a C++ program, you're instructing the compiler to use a standardized way of recording names that's understandable by other software.

If you know assembly and how things work at the OS-level, you are conforming to a certain ABI. The ABI govern things like how parameters are passed, where return values are placed. For many platforms there is only one ABI to choose from, and in those cases the ABI is just "how things work".

However, the ABI also govern things like how classes/objects are laid out in C++. This is necessary if you want to be able to pass object references across module boundaries or if you want to mix code compiled with different compilers.

Also, if you have an 64-bit OS which can execute 32-bit binaries, you will have different ABIs for 32- and 64-bit code.

In general, any code you link into the same executable must conform to the same ABI. If you want to communicate between code using different ABIs, you must use some form of RPC or serialization protocols.

I think you are trying too hard to squeeze in different types of interfaces into a fixed set of characteristics. For example, an interface doesn't necessarily have to be split into consumers and producers. An interface is just a convention by which two entities interact.

ABIs can be (partially) ISA-agnostic. Some aspects (such as calling conventions) depend on the ISA, while other aspects (such as C++ class layout) do not.

A well defined ABI is very important for people writing compilers. Without a well defined ABI, it would be impossible to generate interoperable code.

EDIT: Some notes to clarify:

• "Binary" in ABI does not exclude the use of strings or text. If you want to link a DLL exporting a C++ class, somewhere in it the methods and type signatures must be encoded. That's where C++ name-mangling comes in.
• The reason why you never provided an ABI is that the vast majority of programmers will never do it. ABIs are provided by the same people designing the platform (i.e. operating system), and very few programmers will ever have the privilege to design a widely-used ABI.

You actually don't need an ABI at all if--

• Your program doesn't have functions, and--
• Your program is a single executable that is running alone (i.e. an embedded system) where it's literally the only thing running and it doesn't need to talk to anything else.

An oversimplified summary:

API: "Here are all the functions you may call."

ABI: "This is how to call a function."

The ABI is set of rules that compilers and linkers adhere to in order to compile your program so that will work properly. ABIs cover multiple topics:

• Arguably the biggest and most important part of an ABI is the procedure call standard sometimes known as the "calling convention". Calling conventions standardize how "functions" are translated to assembly code.
• ABIs also dictate the how the names of exposed functions in libraries should be represented so that other code can call those libraries and know what arguments should be passed. This is called "name mangling".
• ABIs also dictate what type of data types can be used, how they must be aligned, and other low-level details.

Taking a deeper look at calling convention, which I consider to be the core of an ABI:

The machine itself has no concept of "functions". When you write a function in a high-level language like c, the compiler generates a line of assembly code like _MyFunction1:. This is a label, which will eventually get resolved into an address by the assembler. This label marks the "start" of your "function" in the assembly code. In high-level code, when you "call" that function, what you're really doing is causing the CPU to jump to the address of that label and continue executing there.

In preparation for the jump, the compiler must do a bunch of important stuff. The calling convention is like a checklist that the compiler follows to do all this stuff:

• First, the compiler inserts a little bit of assembly code to save the current address, so that when your "function" is done, the CPU can jump back to the right place and continue executing.
• Next, the compiler generates assembly code to pass the arguments.
  • Some calling conventions dictate that arguments should be put on the stack (in a particular order of course).
  • Other conventions dictate that the arguments should be put in particular registers (depending on their data types of course).
  • Still other conventions dictate that a specific combination of stack and registers should be used.
• Of course, if there was anything important in those registers before, those values are now overwritten and lost forever, so some calling conventions may dictate that the compiler should save some of those registers prior to putting the arguments in them.
• Now the compiler inserts a jump instruction telling the CPU to go to that label it made previously (_MyFunction1:). At this point, you can consider the CPU to be "in" your "function".
• At the end of the function, the compiler puts some assembly code that will make the CPU write the return value in the correct place. The calling convention will dictate whether the return value should be put into a particular register (depending on its type), or on the stack.
• Now it's time for clean-up. The calling convention will dictate where the compiler places the cleanup assembly code.
  • Some conventions say that the caller must clean up the stack. This means that after the "function" is done and the CPU jumps back to where it was before, the very next code to be executed should be some very specific cleanup code.
  • Other conventions say that the some particular parts of the cleanup code should be at the end of the "function" before the jump back.

There are many different ABIs / calling conventions. Some main ones are:

• For the x86 or x86-64 CPU (32-bit environment):
  • CDECL
  • STDCALL
  • FASTCALL
  • VECTORCALL
  • THISCALL
• For the x86-64 CPU (64-bit environment):
  • SYSTEMV
  • MSNATIVE
  • VECTORCALL
• For the ARM CPU (32-bit)
  • AAPCS
• For the ARM CPU (64-bit)
  • AAPCS64

Here is a great page that actually shows the differences in the assembly generated when compiling for different ABIs.

Another thing to mention is that an ABI isn't only relevant inside your program's executable module. It's also used by the linker to make sure your program calls library functions correctly. You have multiple shared libraries running on your computer, and as long as your compiler knows what ABI they each use, it can call functions from them properly without blowing up the stack.

Your compiler understanding how to call library functions is extremely important. On a hosted platform (that is, one where an OS loads programs), your program can't even blink without making a kernel call.