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

---

[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 non-universal binaries that includes only 64-bit code, replace above command with:

    $ ./make.sh macos-universal-no
  

• To cross-compile Unicorn on 64-bit Linux to target 32-bit binary, 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 macOS.

To cross-compile for iOS (iPhone/iPad/iPod), macOS with Xcode installed is required.

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

    $ ./make.sh ios_armv7
  

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

    $ ./make.sh ios_armv7s
  

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

    $ ./make.sh ios_arm64
  

• To cross-compile for all iOS devices (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.

• To cross-compile for Android Arm, run:

    $ NDK=~/android/android-ndk-r20 ./make.sh cross-android_arm
  

• To cross-compile for Android Arm64, run:

    $ NDK=~/android/android-ndk-r20 ./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

Mac OS X users will also need the GNU version of binutils (for gobjcopy). It can be easily installed with Homebrew: brew install binutils.

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. On Mac OS X with Homebrew: brew install cmocka. You can also easily build and install it from source.

You can run the tests by running make test in the project directory. If you don't build some architecture support then the corresponding tests will fail when run.