kianxali status?

[GoogleCodeExporter]

On my never-ending quest for decent open-source interactive disassembler, I 
stumbled upon kianxali. It's not really what I want - I'd rather have it 
written in Python with Qt interface for ultimate portability and hackability. 
But it's hard not too see how sensible and solid kianxali is, even despite 
gazillion of smaller or cosmetic issues. So, I decided to hack a bit on it, and 
put my fork at https://github.com/pfalcon/kianxali . So, I'd like to know if 
there's more development expected for it, or it's going to be another abandoned 
student project ;-).

Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 8 Sep 2014 at 10:51

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I can't tell yet - while I'd like to be employed in the field of reverse 
engineering, good jobs for reverse engineerers seem to be rather rare.

I still use Kianxali for some hobby projects and will eventually commit some 
improvements, but I can't tell yet whether I will have enough spare time for 
some serious hacking on it.

Maybe METASM is better suited for your needs? It's entirely written in Ruby: 
http://metasm.cr0.org/

Original comment by [email protected] on 9 Sep 2014 at 6:20

[GoogleCodeExporter]

> while I'd like to be employed in the field of reverse engineering, good jobs 
for reverse engineerers seem to be rather rare.

Yeah, and then if you get such job, you may end up not being able to work on 
kianxali due to conflict of interest at all - remember what happened with 
Boomerang? (http://boomerang.sourceforge.net/)

> I still use Kianxali for some hobby projects and will eventually commit some 
improvements, but I can't tell yet whether I will have enough spare time for 
some serious hacking on it.

So, could you please have a look at the changes I make 
(https://github.com/pfalcon/kianxali/commits/pfalcon) and see if you're 
interested to merge them back (them maybe you can mirror project on github, 
because it's much easier to process pull requests there). And fairly speaking, 
my situation is similar - I have gazillion projects, and probably won't be able 
to hack on kianxali sustainably.

> Maybe METASM is better suited for your needs? It's entirely written in Ruby: 
http://metasm.cr0.org/

Thanks for the link, didn't hear about this tool. But I value my time/effort, 
so spend a lot of both on surveying the landscape (instead of hacking ;-) ). 
Granted, I mostly look for Python projects, but surely look for big projects in 
other langs too. And I have to say that few reach functionality and look'n'feel 
of kinaxali. As an example, https://github.com/wisk/medusa offers nice 
screenshots, but trying to build it, I get just an empty window with no menus.

As for Ruby, given a choice between too, I'd rather hack in Java. Actually, if 
I'd go deep with kianxali, I'd add Jython support (and then probably drop 
JRuby, because who needs 50mb jars, though even better approach would be to 
make them true optional plugins).

Original comment by [email protected] on 9 Sep 2014 at 8:41

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for your comments and changes. I've merged your patches into the project 
here and will think about the GitHub mirroring / moving soon.

Original comment by [email protected] on 10 Sep 2014 at 11:48

• Changed state: Accepted

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi, can you please pull another change from my branch: 
https://github.com/pfalcon/kianxali/commit/2e650ec2a57e1aff115b7cdf350140db88a74
c13

Original comment by [email protected] on 31 Jan 2015 at 1:52

[GoogleCodeExporter]

And also follow-up commit: 
https://github.com/pfalcon/kianxali/commit/08c4f8e56dbaef29beffc9e09ac772cd9be91
990

(These changes were done yet in Sept, but of course, I got side-tracked with 
other stuff - it's only few times a year I remember how nice it would be to 
have open-source interactive RE tool ;-) ).

Original comment by [email protected] on 31 Jan 2015 at 2:03

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Thanks for the patch, I've integrated it

Original comment by [email protected] on 1 Mar 2015 at 8:30