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RetDec

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RetDec is a retargetable machine-code decompiler based on LLVM.

The decompiler is not limited to any particular target architecture, operating system, or executable file format:

Features:

For more information, check out our

Installation

There are two ways of obtaining and installing RetDec:

  1. Download and unpack a pre-built stable or bleeding-edge package and follow instructions in the Use section of its retdec/share/retdec/README.md file after unpacking.
  2. Build RetDec by yourself from sources by following the Build and Installation section. After installation, follow instructions below.

We currently support Windows (7 or later), Linux, macOS, and (experimentally) FreeBSD. An installed version of RetDec requires approximately 5 to 6 GB of free disk space.

Use

Please, ensure that you reading instructions corresponding to the used RetDec version. If unsure, refer to the retdec/share/retdec/README.md file in the installation.

Windows

  1. After installing RetDec, install Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2017.

  2. Install the following programs:

    • UPX (Optional: if you want to use UPX unpacker in the preprocessing stage)
    • Graphviz (Optional: if you want to generate call or control flow graphs)

  3. To decompile a binary file named test.exe, run

    $RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR\bin\retdec-decompiler.exe test.exe

    For more information, run retdec-decompiler.exe with --help.

Linux

  1. After installing RetDec, install the following packages via your distribution's package manager:

    • UPX (Optional: if you want to use UPX unpacker in the preprocessing stage)
    • Graphviz (Optional: if you want to generate call or control flow graphs)

  2. To decompile a binary file named test.exe, run

    $RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR/bin/retdec-decompiler test.exe

    For more information, run retdec-decompiler with --help.

macOS

  1. After installing RetDec, install the following packages:

    • UPX (Optional: if you want to use UPX unpacker in the preprocessing stage)
    • Graphviz (Optional: if you want to generate call or control flow graphs)

  2. To decompile a binary file named test.exe, run

    $RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR/bin/retdec-decompiler test.exe

    For more information, run retdec-decompiler with --help.

FreeBSD (Experimental)

  1. There are currently no pre-built "ports" packages for FreeBSD. You will have to build and install the decompiler by yourself. The process is described below.

  2. To decompile a binary file named test.exe, run

    $RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR/bin/retdec-decompiler test.exe

    For more information, run retdec-decompiler with --help.

Use of RetDec libraries

You can easily use various RetDec libraries in your projects - if they are build with CMake. RetDec installation contains all the necessary headers, libraries, and CMake scripts.

If you installed RetDec into a standard installation location of your system (e.g. /usr, /usr/local), all you need to do in order to use its components is:

find_package(retdec 5.0 REQUIRED
   COMPONENTS
      <component>
      [...]
)
target_link_libraries(your-project
   PUBLIC
      retdec::<component>
      [...]
)

If you did not install RetDec somewhere where it can be automatically discovered, you need to help CMake find it before find_package() is used. There are generally two ways to do it (pick & use only one):

  1. Add the RetDec installation directory to CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH:

    list(APPEND CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH ${RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR})

  2. Set the path to installed RetDec CMake scripts to retdec_DIR:

    set(retdec_DIR ${RETDEC_INSTALL_DIR}/share/retdec/cmake)

See the Repository Overview wiki page for the list of available RetDec components, or the retdec-build-system-tests for demos on how to use them.

Build and Installation

This section describes a local build and installation of RetDec. Instructions for Docker are given in the next section.

Requirements

Linux

On Debian-based distributions (e.g. Ubuntu), the required packages can be installed with apt-get:

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake git openssl libssl-dev python3 autoconf automake libtool pkg-config m4 zlib1g-dev upx doxygen graphviz

On RPM-based distributions (e.g. Fedora), the required packages can be installed with dnf:

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ cmake make git openssl openssl-devel python3 autoconf automake libtool pkg-config m4 zlib-devel upx doxygen graphviz

On Arch Linux, the required packages can be installed with pacman:

sudo pacman --needed -S base-devel cmake git openssl python3 autoconf automake libtool pkg-config m4 zlib upx doxygen graphviz

Windows

macOS

Packages should be preferably installed via Homebrew.

FreeBSD (Experimental)

Packages should be installed via FreeBSDs pre-compiled package repository using the pkg command or built from scratch using the ports database method.

Process

Note: Although RetDec now supports a system-wide installation (#94), unless you use your distribution's package manager to install it, we recommend installing RetDec locally into a designated directory. The reason for this is that uninstallation will be easier as you will only need to remove a single directory. To perform a local installation, run cmake with the -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=<path> parameter, where <path> is directory into which RetDec will be installed (e.g. $HOME/projects/retdec-install on Linux and macOS, and C:\projects\retdec-install on Windows).

You have to pass the following parameters to cmake:

You can pass the following additional parameters to cmake:

Build in Docker

Docker support is maintained by community. If something does not work for you or if you have suggestions for improvements, open an issue or PR.

Build Image

Building in Docker does not require installation of the required libraries locally. This is a good option for trying out RetDec without setting up the whole build toolchain.

To build the RetDec Docker image, run

docker build -t retdec - < Dockerfile

This builds the image from the master branch of this repository.

To build the image using the local copy of the repository, use the development Dockerfile, Dockerfile.dev:

docker build -t retdec:dev . -f Dockerfile.dev

Run Container

If your uid is not 1000, make sure that the directory containing your input binary files is accessible for RetDec:

chmod 0777 /path/to/local/directory

Now, you can run the decompiler inside a container:

docker run --rm -v /path/to/local/directory:/destination retdec retdec-decompiler /destination/binary

Note: Do not modify the /destination part is. You only need to change /path/to/local/directory. Output files will then be generated to /path/to/local/directory.

Nightly Builds

We generate up-to-date RetDec packages from the latest commit in the master branch in two ways:

The builds are mostly meant to be used by RetDec developers, contributors, and other people experimenting with the product (e.g. testing if an issue present in the official release still exists in the current master).

You can use these as you wish, but keep in mind that there are no guarantees they will work on your system (especially the Linux version), and that regressions are a possibility. To get a stable RetDec version, either download the latest official pre-built package or build the latest RetDec version tag.

TeamCity

Github Actions

You can find builds for macOS, Linux and Windows in the latest RetDec CI workflow run.

Project Documentation

See the project documentation for an up to date Doxygen-generated software reference corresponding to the latest commit in the master branch.

Related Repositories

License

Copyright (c) 2017 Avast Software, licensed under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more details.

RetDec incorporates a modified PeLib library. New modules added by Avast Software are licensed under the MIT license. The original sources are licensed under the following license:

RetDec uses third-party libraries or other resources listed, along with their licenses, in the LICENSE-THIRD-PARTY file.

Contributing

See RetDec contribution guidelines.

Acknowledgements

This software was supported by the research funding TACR (Technology Agency of the Czech Republic), ALFA Programme No. TA01010667.