Jay-Alexander Elliot
bddddccdee
* feat(native): admit bounded MIPS ELF analysis through Ghidra Retain MIPS ELF identity and interpretation through Evidence and snapshots. Keep provider admission bounded to ELF32 ET_EXEC o32 MIPS32r2, without implicitly widening Hopper, IDA or Windows P0 coverage. Add source-owned fixtures and an optional real-provider verifier; real Ghidra verification remains pending in this contribution environment. Refs #718 * fix(ghidra): bound MIPS floating-point mode admission Reject explicit EF_MIPS_FP64 and EF_MIPS_NAN2008 declarations until their semantics have a real-provider verification lane. Add PSP PRX/Allegrex, o64/EABI and floating-point-mode refusal regressions. Document that the header gate is not a full .MIPS.abiflags check and advance the profile lane identity to invalidate older interpretation bindings. Validation: 24 standalone checks against the transpiled production profile module passed; the two new flag cases failed before this change. Clang 17 and LLD compiled the source-owned fixture for both endian targets. The complete Vitest/typecheck suite and real Ghidra verification remain pending. Refs morluto/rea#718; PSP support remains follow-up morluto/rea#1330. * fix(native): validate MIPS ABI records before Ghidra admission Read bounded ELF32 PT_MIPS_ABIFLAGS and SHT_MIPS_ABIFLAGS records through the already-open target handle. Preserve declared ABI fields, reject conflicting/duplicate/truncated records, and keep missing records unknown. Wire inspection into target resolution before provider selection. Require compatible declarations for the deliberately narrow Ghidra lane and bind all ABI fields into profile identity (v3) for snapshot invalidation. Clang 17 produced eight source-owned fixtures spanning both byte orders and FPXX/FP32/FP64/soft-float modes with identical ELF header flags. The new reader and policy distinguish them. 24 focused regression test bodies passed after TypeScript transpilation using node:test in place of Vitest; strict isolated TypeScript checking of the reader and target/result types passed. These are limited checks, not full Vitest/project typechecking or real-Ghidra verification, which remain pending. Advances morluto/rea#718. PSP/Allegrex remains morluto/rea#1330 follow-up. * fix(native): repair MIPS integration boundaries and test resolver behavior Keep ELF targets out of Hopper Mach-O preparation and scope existing PE fixture types correctly. Move ABI tests into the filesystem boundary lane, use shared cleanup, add resolver regressions, apply the pinned formatter, and register the real MIPS verifier through the existing package-command pattern. Validated with repository-pinned Node/npm, check:ci, actual focused Vitest, discovery and docs:check. Real Ghidra conformance remains pending. * fix(test): honor caller-selected JDK in real MIPS verification * test(native): strengthen MIPS Ghidra conformance Cross-check the source-owned fixture with bounded GNU readelf inspection, compare production ELF/ABI interpretation and independent symbol addresses, and verify effective Ghidra language/compiler identity through existing public operations. Add a source-owned fixed-encoding probe for immediate and conditional branch checks plus global/string byte assertions. Add 16 assertion/producer-boundary regression cases without widening production admission, changing provider contracts, or introducing proprietary dependencies. Local focused suite: 99 passed, one existing root-permission test skipped. Typecheck, lint/module boundaries, formatting and 700-file discovery pass; full hosted checks and real Ghidra verification remain pending for this checkpoint. * fix(ghidra): preserve native-tool architecture checks after MIPS integration The conflict-free upstream merge failed TypeScript compilation because includes on the union of MIPS-only and other architecture arrays requires never. Use equality-based membership without casts or changing accepted native hosts. Extend the existing native-decompiler rejection table with a MIPS executable at a Linux x64 tool path; retain upstream FAT and unknown-header behavior. Hosted verification follows this commit; no success is claimed yet. --------- Co-authored-by: github-actions[bot] <41898282+github-actions[bot]@users.noreply.github.com>
5.5 KiB
MIPS ELF analysis through Ghidra
This lane extends native ELF analysis; it does not execute MIPS code or rehost firmware. It advances the generic-MIPS portion of #718, not the whole firmware roadmap. PSP/Allegrex remains a separate specialization tracked in #1330.
Admission boundary
ELF EM_MIPS is retained as the provider-neutral mips family. The target also
retains class, byte order, e_type, raw e_flags, and inspected ABI declarations.
Recognition does not mean every provider or MIPS variant is supported. Existing
PE, managed and Mach-O architecture sets are unchanged.
The first Ghidra lane admits ELF32 ET_EXEC, little or big endian, with explicit
o32 and EF_MIPS_ARCH_32R2 flags and no machine-specific or ASE encoding flags.
These are header declarations, not proof that every instruction conforms to
that ISA. ELF64, n32/n64, unspecified ABI, MIPS16/microMIPS, machine-specific
variants, shared/relocatable objects and PSP PRX are not covered by this lane.
Their family may be identified, but provider selection returns the specific
unsupported constraint rather than guessing a compatible profile.
Explicit EF_MIPS_FP64 and EF_MIPS_NAN2008 declarations are refused. Their
absence is insufficient: Clang can emit identical e_flags for FP32, FP64 and
soft-float targets. Target resolution also reads the 24-byte ABI flags record
identified by PT_MIPS_ABIFLAGS and/or SHT_MIPS_ABIFLAGS, without relying on
section names or the record being inside the initial 4 KiB header probe.
Program and section declarations must agree; duplicate, conflicting, truncated
or out-of-file records are rejected. Stripped section tables and section-only
records are supported. Extended table numbering is explicitly unsupported.
The field layout follows
Elf_MIPS_ABIFlags_v0.
Provider admission requires record version 0, MIPS32r2, 32-bit GPR/CPR1, no CPR2, and a double-precision or FPXX ABI declaration with no ISA extension, ASE or unknown general flags. Missing records remain unknown rather than defaulting to a compatible ABI, and this initial lane refuses them. Unknown record values are retained for diagnosis but do not gain provider support. These checks bind the declared interpretation; the integer-only fixture does not establish full floating-point behavioral conformance.
MIPS header and ABI record facts are committed in the analysis profile so
interpretation changes invalidate profile-bound snapshots. The support-lane
identity is versioned independently of file identity. Evidence, lifecycle
outputs and saved snapshots preserve the mips family. Hopper and IDA adapters
do not implicitly gain MIPS support. Windows Ghidra P0 remains PE x86/x86-64 only.
Use
With a caller-installed Ghidra and compatible JDK on a supported Linux/macOS host:
rea analyze /absolute/path/to/mips.elf --provider ghidra --json
rea function /absolute/path/to/mips.elf function_name --provider ghidra --json
MCP uses the existing tools, including open_binary with an absolute path and
provider_id: "ghidra". No MIPS-specific tool catalog or emulator is introduced.
Inspect instructions, caller relationships and data alongside pseudocode. In
particular, delay-slot semantics are supplied by Ghidra, not reconstructed by
REA's ELF parser.
Verification
The source-owned freestanding fixture is tests/conformance/c/mips.c. The
optional cross-target lane requires a caller-supplied Clang with MIPS targets,
LLD, GNU readelf, Ghidra and its compatible JDK; ordinary host-native checks
do not acquire these tools. REA_MIPS_CLANG selects Clang and
REA_MIPS_READELF selects GNU readelf (for example greadelf on macOS).
These are test-time prerequisites, not REA runtime providers.
GHIDRA_INSTALL_DIR=/absolute/path/to/ghidra npm run verify:ghidra:mips
The lane compiles both byte orders and never executes the targets. GNU readelf independently supplies header/ABI facts and symbol addresses, compared with the production REA target resolver before provider startup. Its version, bounded command output and selected tool path are retained in the verification report. The parser deliberately recognizes only this fixture's GNU output, rejecting missing, ambiguous or unexpected fields rather than substituting defaults.
Existing public MCP operations check Ghidra's observed language/compiler
specification and loaded-file hashes. The source-owned mips-probe.S supplies
fixed ADDIU and conditional-branch encodings: verification checks bytes, length,
immediate and direct destination, independent of decompiler variable names.
Global and string bytes are checked at independently reported symbol addresses.
ELF load-image results retain observations even though REA's independent
load-image comparison currently covers DOS, not ELF; this lane checks those
observations and does not relabel the upstream result as verified.
CLI/MCP discovery and decompilation, direct calls, target/profile/Evidence identity, snapshot round-trip and final process cleanup remain covered. Pseudocode presence is a liveness check, not proof of semantic equivalence. Instruction decoding and reader agreement likewise do not establish runtime, delay-slot execution or complete floating-point semantics. Assertion regressions reject incorrect byte order, constants, destinations and loaded identities. Parser/profile tests are narrower checks, not substitutes for this real-provider run. Report the actual lanes run and leave unexecuted verification pending.