idatil2c

Convert IDA Type Library *.til to Compilable C Header!

Related Project

This repo is intended to be used in other projects, enabling various C parser to directly use IDA's type library

• ida_kern_til: Convert IDA libs to Python ctypes
• ghidra_ida_til: Convert IDA til to Ghidra GDT
• ghidra_objc: Export ObjC class parsed by IDA to Ghidra

How to Use

1. Install Node.JS (For faster RegExp) and PyPy (for faster, but CPython is also OK)
2. Export TIL content using tilib -lc XXX.til > XXX.til.h
3. Run script:
   • Simplest: python3 idatil2c.py input/XXX.til.h output/XXX.til.h
   • With dependency: python3 idatil2c.py input/XXX.til.h output/XXX.til.h depends1.h depends2.h ...
     • The script will exclude defined types, and convert to #include statements, so there won't duplicate types.
4. Throw them to others:
   • Ghidra: Compile to GDT
   • CtypesLib: Convert to Ctypes Wrapper

How it works?

BeforeAll: Everything in this script is based on RegEx, so it's highly dependent on tilib's stable output fomat

1. Sanitize Header: (see sanitizeHdr) Remove ALL C++ things

   • Remove various Cpp syntax: :: ? ~
   • Replace template arguments <XXX> using regex
   • Remove VFT
   • Remove definition that's same as depends header
     • That's round1, there'll still be forward decls to be removed

2. Parse Each Line: (see parseDecls) This step does not do filtering

   • Get each definition line's type class (typedef/union/enum/struct/etc.), type name
   • Removes various modifiers, so that RegEx would be easier

     '__cdecl', '__cppobj', '__unaligned', 'volatile', 
     '__declspec\([^()]+\)', '__declspec\([^()]+\([^()]+\)\)', # mssdk
     '__far', # bc5w16: IOleInPlaceActiveObject far *This
     '__attribute__(XXX)',
     

   • Remove comments

3. Filter Decls: (see filterDecls)

   • Remove blacklist types
   • Remove depends definition (round2)
     • Check if types are defined in depends: ^(struct|union|enum)( [\w\d_]+)*%s [{:]
     • Only defs like struct XXX { or struct XXX : YYY { are accepted

4. PostProcess Decls: (see processDecls)

   • Handle anonymous nested structs (usually union types)
     • Example: struct XXX {union {char A; int B;};};
     • We need to extract the union to corresponding type (usually XXX::$ABCDEF12345)
   • For Clang:
     • Convert enum to enum class: because clang doesn't like enum XXX : int32 {, but it likes enum class XXX : int32 {
   • For Ghidra:
     • Ghidra simply can't specify enum's base type, we have to replace both enum class XXX : YYY and enum XXX : YYY to enum XXX
     • Ghidra does not support multi class inherit: we have to convert struct XXX: YYY, ZZZ into struct XXX { YYY __cppsuper0; ZZZ __cppsuper1; };

5. Calculate Type Dependencies and Output: (see outputCtypesLibCpp)

   1. Ignore pure forward declarations (IDA's TIL ensures that a type name can only appear once, so there won't be forward decl and complete decl at same time)
   2. Compare each type to each type one by one
      • Even if it's only a O(n^2) operation, that would be too slow using Python
      • Instead, we fill all typenames into one RegEx, and uses JS to search it, then it would be a O(nlogn) operation
      • RegEx: (?<=[ ;*(){},\[])(${Object.keys(typeDefs).join('|')})([ ;*(){},\[]+)
   3. Check chars after typename to see whether it's pointer ref or direct ref, and check if it can be ignored
      • For struct/union they can be forward declarations, so pointer ref can be ignored.
      • If we are typedef, then typedef to struct/union can also be ignored.
   4. Replace builtin type's definition (like typedef XXX wchar_t) to #define
   5. BFS iterate all dependency pairs, and generate final output in the order of dependency

6. Final Output:

   • Replace various invalid identifiers: (Used in struct/union fields)
     • const float register default
     • (For Ghidra): _extension
     • (...) -> (int, ...)
   • Ghidra does not support array in method parameters (like int XXX(char *arg1[]) )
     • Case1: TYPNAME (*)FieldName[]
     • Case2: TYPNAME (*)[]
     • Case3: int (*methName[])(XXXXX)
     • Actually TYPNAME can have modifiers like unsigned
   • Generate include statements
   • Generate macro statements (for TYPEDEF_HELPERS)