ELF

Executable and Linking Format (ELF) is the extension used on Wii mode Wii homebrew files. It is a standard format used for executable files, object files and shared libraries on most modern unix like systems. By design, ELF is flexible, extensible, and cross-platform, not bound to any given central processing unit (CPU) or instruction set architecture. This has allowed it to be adopted by many different operating systems on many different hardware platforms.

Platforms

In the context of game console homebrew software, the ELF format is used on the following platforms:

• Nintendo Wii
• Sony PSP

Tools

• readelf is a Unix binary utility that displays information about one or more ELF files. A free software implementation is provided by GNU Binutils.
• elfutils provides alternative tools to GNU Binutils purely for Linux.
• elfdump is a command for viewing ELF information in an ELF file, available under Solaris and FreeBSD.
• objdump provides a wide range of information about ELF files and other object formats. objdump uses the Binary File Descriptor library as a back-end to structure the ELF data.
• The Unix file utility can display some information about ELF files, including the instruction set architecture for which the code in a relocatable, executable, or shared object file is intended, or on which an ELF core dump was produced.