elf_analysis

Reads an .elf file and parses the .text and .debug_line sections. It assigns every instruction a source file and a line number. The data is provided through a C interface. The source code is compiled to WebAssembly using Emscripten to be used in the VS-Code extension Elf Lens.

Features

What it does

• Parses an .elf file using elfio
• Disassembles the '.text' section using capstone
• Decodes the '.debug_line' section using a diy implementation
• Provides a C interface to access the data

Development environment

• Uses VSCode Remote-Containers for development
• Uses the same Docker container to build the project with Github Actions
• Dependencies (elfio and capstone) are fetched during CMake configure with FetchContent
• The source code is compiled using GCC 10
• The source code is compiled using Emscripten

Limitations

• It is designed to work with a small codebase (for embedded development)
• It supports only 'ARM Thumb Code' for the '.text' section and 'Dwarf 3' debug information (standard when building with GCC) in the '.debug_line' section
• It also has a limited support for 'x86-64' code (no guarantees here)

How to build

GCC

# assuming CMake, Ninja and GCC 10 is installed
cmake -G Ninja -S . -B ./build
cmake --build ./build

Emscripten

# assuming CMake, Ninja, LLVM and Emscripten is installed
cmake -G Ninja -S . -B ./build -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=/emsdk/upstream/emscripten/cmake/Modules/Platform/Emscripten.cmake 
cmake --build ./build

You can also use the VS-Code extension Remote-Containers and run the predefined Tasks to build this project.
Note that building this project was only tested with Ubuntu Groovy so far.