unicorn/docs/COMPILE-NIX.md

This documentation explains how to compile, install & run Unicorn on MacOSX, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Android & iOS.

To compile for Microsoft Windows, see COMPILE-WINDOWS.md

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[0] Dependencies

Unicorn requires few dependent packages as follows.

• For Mac OS X, "pkg-config" and "glib" are needed. Brew users can install "pkg-config" and "glib" with:

    $ brew install pkg-config glib
  

  NOTE: to build Unicorn universal binaries (which support both 32-bit & 64-bit), you need to have glib in universal format. To do that, build & install glib with:

    $ brew install glib --universal
  

• For Linux, "glib2-dev" is needed. Ubuntu/Debian users can install this with:

    $ sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev
  

[1] Tailor Unicorn to your need.

Out of 6 archtitectures supported by Unicorn (Arm, Arm64, M68K, Mips, Sparc, & X86), if you just need several selected archs, choose which ones you want to compile in by editing "config.mk" before going to next steps.

By default, all 6 architectures are compiled. If this is what you want, skip to the section 2.

The other way of customize Unicorn without having to edit config.mk is to pass the desired options on the commandline to ./make.sh. Currently, Unicorn supports 4 options, as follows.

• UNICORN_ARCHS: specify list of architectures to compiled in.
• UNICORN_STATIC: build static library.
• UNICORN_SHARED: build dynamic (shared) library.
• UNICORN_QEMU_FLAGS: specify extra flags for qemu's configure script

To avoid editing config.mk for these customization, we can pass their values to make.sh, as follows.

    $ UNICORN_ARCHS="arm aarch64 x86" ./make.sh

NOTE: on commandline, put these values in front of ./make.sh, not after it.

For each option, refer to docs/README for more details.

[2] Compile and install from source on *nix

To build Unicorn on *nix (such as MacOSX, Linux, *BSD, Solaris):

• To compile for current platform, run:

    $ ./make.sh
  

  On Mac OS, to build universal binaries including both 32-bit & 64-bit code, replace above command with:

    $ ./make.sh macos-universal
  

• Unicorn requires Python 2.x to compile. If Python 2.x is not the default Python interpreter, ensure that the appropriate option is set:

    $ UNICORN_QEMU_FLAGS="--python=/path/to/python2" ./make.sh
  

• To cross-compile Unicorn on 64-bit Linux to target 32-bit binary, install libglib2.0-dev for i386. On Ubuntu, this can be done with:

    $ sudo apt-get install libglib2.0-dev:i386
  

  Then cross-compile to 32-bit with:

    $ ./make.sh linux32
  

  After compiling, install Unicorn with:

    $ sudo ./make.sh install
  

  For FreeBSD/OpenBSD, where sudo is unavailable, run:

    $ su; ./make.sh install
  

  Users are then required to enter root password to copy Unicorn into machine system directories.

  Afterwards, run ./samples/sample_all.sh to test the sample emulations.

  NOTE: The core framework installed by "./make.sh install" consist of following files:

    /usr/include/unicorn/unicorn.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/x86.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/arm.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/arm64.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/mips.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/ppc.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/sparc.h
    /usr/include/unicorn/m68k.h
    /usr/lib/libunicorn.so (for Linux/*nix), or /usr/lib/libunicorn.dylib (OSX)
    /usr/lib/libunicorn.a
  

[3] Cross-compile for iOS from Mac OSX.

To cross-compile for iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod), Mac OSX with XCode installed is required.

• To cross-compile for ArmV7 (iPod 4, iPad 1/2/3, iPhone4, iPhone4S), run:

    $ ./make.sh ios_armv7
  

• To cross-compile for ArmV7s (iPad 4, iPhone 5C, iPad mini), run:

    $ ./make.sh ios_armv7s
  

• To cross-compile for Arm64 (iPhone 5S, iPad mini Retina, iPad Air), run:

    $ ./make.sh ios_arm64
  

• To cross-compile for all iDevices (armv7 + armv7s + arm64), run:

    $ ./make.sh ios
  

Resulted files libunicorn.dylib, libunicorn.a & tests/test* can then be used on iOS devices.

[4] Cross-compile for Android

To cross-compile for Android (smartphone/tablet), Android NDK is required. NOTE: Only ARM and ARM64 are currently supported.

    $ NDK=/android/android-ndk-r10e ./make.sh cross-android arm

or $ NDK=/android/android-ndk-r10e ./make.sh cross-android arm64

Resulted files libunicorn.so, libunicorn.a & tests/test* can then be used on Android devices.

[5] By default, "cc" (default C compiler on the system) is used as compiler.

• To use "clang" compiler instead, run the command below:

    $ ./make.sh clang
  

• To use "gcc" compiler instead, run:

    $ ./make.sh gcc
  

[6] To uninstall Unicorn, run the command below:

    $ sudo ./make.sh uninstall

[7] Language bindings

Look for the bindings under directory bindings/, and refer to README file of corresponding languages.

[8] Unit tests

Automated unit tests use the cmocka unit testing framework (https://cmocka.org/). It can be installed in most Linux distros using the package manager, e.g. sudo yum install libcmocka libcmocka-devel, or you can easily build and install it from source.

You can run the tests by running make test in the project directory.