I'm not sure that I understand but can zydis output assembly/object files?

[rempas]

The description says:

Fast and lightweight x86/x86-64 disassembler and code generation library

But what "code generation" exactly means? Does this mean that it generates either assembly or (even better) machine code? It may be obvious but I didn't see an IR and the examples only show the "encoding" and "decoding" stuff.

[mappzor]

"Code generation" means "encoding" i.e. generating machine code.

[rempas]

@flobernd Thank you! I can wait for PE files as I'm currently interested in ELF files (and my frontend is very early in development anyway). Another question that raises from this is that, If I'm using 2 libraries, what will be the compile time performance? Do you yet have an benchmarks in this regard?

[flobernd]

Should I create the ELF (for Unix) files manually and the place the hex code manually?

Yes. The hex output in the encoder sample is just a human readable representation of the machine code.

Another question that raises from this is that, If I'm using 2 libraries, what will be the compile time performance? Do you yet have an benchmarks in this regard?

Zasm is build on top of Zydis, so it will effectively be the same library 😋 Regarding exact numbers and ELF support, probably @ZehMatt has some answers for you.

[rempas]

Thanks for everything! I find myself enjoying creating a frontened more and more but the backend is another thing.... Not only it's hard to learn the instructions but at the same time, you have different instructions for different platforms, you must make the optimizations, etc. And keep in mind that all that must be in a professional level as I don't want to make a toy language.

So yeah, making all these will take me years so finding a library and using the work and effort some has already make is a win-win!

[ZehMatt]

Sorry that I'm late to the party, I have not yet published the "frontend" part what I call it, I just finished the PE builder part recently demonstrated here https://gist.github.com/ZehMatt/626eb4e7f78bbff74d2615308bdf7d87
The code currently relies on the LIEF library and has no support for ELF from scratch but with zasm you have enough information to build most common binary/object/linker files if you really want to.

[rempas]

@ZehMatt Thanks for the info my friend!