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.

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, run:

    $ ./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.