Homebrew commonly ships its unstripped ELF next to the EBOOT, which is already
how the symbol loader turns z_un_08841f98 into a function name. That same ELF
carries a DWARF .debug_line section, so the addresses can be mapped to source
files and lines too - and a backtrace stops being four hex numbers:
08841f98 move sp,fp mesh.zig:163
0883afa4 li v0,0x0 MenuState.zig:821
088260d8 andi at,v0,0xFFFF State.zig:40
0882a27c andi at,v0,0xFFFF engine.zig:468
Surfaced in three places: per frame in hle.backtrace, in the "hit" object that
cpu.breakpoint.hit and cpu.stepping share, and appended to the disassembly
window's status bar. The breakpoint case keys on the pc rather than the address,
since for a memory breakpoint the useful source location is the instruction that
did the access, not the data it touched.
Storage is a plain sorted table of absolute addresses per module. SymbolMap
keeps module-relative addresses because its .ppsym files are meant to be
reloaded by a different game that pulls in the same module; none of this is ever
written anywhere - it's regenerated from the ELF each boot - so there'd be
nothing for relative addresses to buy. Each module owns its own rows and file
names outright and is keyed the way SymbolMap::UnloadModule is, so unloading one
module drops its lines and nobody else's.
The subtle part is end-of-sequence markers. Without them a lookup for an address
in a gap - a compilation unit built without debug info - confidently reports the
last line of an unrelated file. A prototype run over one test binary
mis-attributed 70 of its 349 functions that way, so sequence ends are recorded
as rows with line 0 and a lookup landing on one reports nothing instead.
DWARF 2 through 4 are decoded (psp-gcc emits 2, Zig 4). Version 5 re-encoded the
file table, so those units are skipped with a warning rather than mis-parsed -
nothing targeting the PSP produces it today.
Scope, since it's narrower than it sounds: PRX conversion strips every .debug
section. I checked all 437 pspautotests .prx and CrossCraft's own app.prx -
none have any. Of 24 installed homebrew EBOOTs, zero carry debug info; CrossCraft
only does because it ships app.elf separately. So this helps someone developing
homebrew, and does nothing at all for a commercial game.
Costs about 1.2 MB for a large Zig binary (98383 rows, 438 files) and nothing
for anything without debug info. Follows bAutoSaveLoadSymbols like the symbols
do.
pspautotests 314/314, UnitTest 55/55, CoreUWP builds.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
A stack walk has to recognize the function it starts in, so it comes back empty
exactly when execution has gone somewhere unexpected - which is when a
backtrace is most wanted. Chasing the CrossCraft jump to 0xae870000, this
returned {"frames": []} and the call site had to be reconstructed by hand from
the registers.
When the walk fails, report the two things still known: the current pc, and ra,
which for a botched call still holds the return address and so points at the
instruction after the call. On that crash it now hands back the bad pc and
088c0194, whose entry is 088c00f0 - the call site, immediately.
Frames from the fallback are marked with "walked": false, since ra may well
have been overwritten already - it's a lead, not a stack walk. Disassembly is
skipped for a pc that isn't readable, which is the case that got us here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
Module symbols are keyed by module+crc so they're shared by every game that
loads that module. But symbols the user attaches to addresses that aren't in
any module - the heap, the stack, scratchpad, a hardware register, typically
after a memory.search - describe one game's own memory layout and are worthless
to any other game. Those now go to PSP/SYSTEM/SYMBOLS/<gameID>_syms.ppsym.
They're module index 0 ("absolute"), which already round-trips through the
existing per-module code: GetModuleRelativeAddr/GetModuleAbsoluteAddr are
identity for it, so the file format is unchanged, just with absolute addresses.
SaveModuleSymbols only needed to stop requiring a ModuleEntry. Auto-load/save
hang off CPU_Init/CPU_Shutdown rather than module load/unload, gated on the same
bAutoSaveLoadSymbols setting - and deliberately not on SYSPROP_HAS_DEBUGGER,
which only the Windows port reports true for, so LoadSymbolsIfSupported next to
it does nothing at all on headless. hle.game.saveSymbols/loadSymbols expose it.
Four things found while doing it:
- Symbols outside any module were being dropped on the floor. AddFunction/
AddData/AddLabel take moduleIndex -1 as "work it out", pass it to
GetModuleIndex(), and store whatever comes back - but that returns -1 when no
module contains the address, and -1 is never an active module, so the symbol
never reached the active maps: invisible to every lookup and to any save.
hle.data.add had spotted this and normalized -1 to 0 locally; nothing else
did, so e.g. hle.func.add outside a module silently did nothing. Fixed
centrally in a new ResolveModuleIndex() the three of them share.
(This only became reachable with the GetModuleIndex() fix in 29a38af37e -
before that it returned a wrong-but-valid module index instead.)
- The saved files were almost entirely noise. Every function the analyzer finds
is named z_un_<addr> and every import stub zz_<name>, both regenerated from
scratch on each load. One real module wrote 13KB - 443 unnamed functions and
64 stub names - for the four names a human had actually chosen. Worse, on the
next run those were loaded back as authoritative and would beat the module's
own symbols to the address. Now only names that aren't regenerated get saved,
and a module with none writes no file at all (and removes a stale one, so
deleting a symbol sticks). That module's file went 13020 -> 81 bytes.
- LoadModuleSymbols trusted the addresses in the file. It's meant to be
hand-edited and can outlive the build it came from, so relative addresses past
the end of the module are now skipped with a warning instead of landing at
nonsense addresses.
- AddFunction and AddData both erased the map entry they were updating and then
read back through the now-dangling iterator to refresh the active copy. Only
latent: the refresh is guarded on the active copy's module matching the new
one, which is false exactly when the erase happens. Re-point the iterator at
the entry's new home instead, so it can't rot if that guard ever changes.
AddLabel already did the equivalent correctly, via a local copy.
Filename sanitizing goes through SanitizeString with a new FileName restriction
rather than being open-coded; unlike the existing restrictions it substitutes
'_' instead of dropping, so two module names can't collapse onto one file.
Verified end to end on headless with cpu_alu.prx: named a function inside the
module and data/functions in scratchpad and the heap, let it exit, checked both
files, rebooted and confirmed all of it came back at the right addresses.
Unit tests 51/51, pspautotests 314/314.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
SymbolMap:
- Fix GetModuleIndex(): it only checked the end of an active module's range
(via activeModuleEnds.upper_bound), never the start, so an address sitting
in the gap before a module was silently misattributed to it. Added
GetModuleIndexByName() as a companion lookup.
- AddModule() gains an optional crc param, stored per ModuleEntry. Reactivating
a module by name now also requires the crc to agree when both sides know it,
so two unrelated binaries that happen to share a name no longer get merged
into one symbol table (addresses the old TODO at the top of SymbolMap.h).
- AddLabel()/AddFunction() gain an updateName param (default false, preserving
existing "first writer wins" behavior) so a trusted source - like a loaded
symbol file - can be allowed to overwrite a name that a lower-confidence
automatic pass already assigned.
- New SaveModuleSymbols()/LoadModuleSymbols()/GetModuleSymbolsPath(): save or
restore one module's functions/data/labels to/from a small human-editable
text file, addressed relative to the module (so the file stays valid however
the module ends up positioned on a later run). Keyed by
PSP/SYSTEM/SYMBOLS/<moduleName>_<crc>.ppsym - deliberately by module+crc
rather than by game, so it's shared by every game/homebrew that loads the
exact same module. A "# game <id> <title>" comment records who last saved
it, informational only.
WebSocket debugger: hle.module.saveSymbols/loadSymbols expose the above.
sceKernelModule.cpp: auto-load a module's saved symbols right after it's
registered with the symbol map (both the real ELF-load path and the
savestate-load path), and auto-save on unload (before UnloadModule(), while
its symbols are still active) - gated behind the new bAutoSaveLoadSymbols
config setting (default off), with a matching Developer Tools checkbox and
a --auto-save-load-symbols command-line override for headless use.
Includes some in-progress cleanup already staged: DescribeAddress now calls
g_symbolMap->GetDescription() directly instead of through the now-removed
MIPSDebugInterface::getDescription() wrapper.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
AddLabel() won't overwrite an existing label. That's deliberate and right for
bulk import - a real ELF symbol name shouldn't lose to the analyzer's later
z_un_* - but wrong when someone is explicitly naming an address, so a second
hle.data.add at the same address silently kept the old name. The response echoed
the requested name back either way, so there was no sign anything had been
ignored.
Force the requested name in with SetLabelName() now, except when a function
starts at that address and owns the label - renaming that function isn't what
"label this data" should mean, and it would undo the care hle.data.remove takes
not to destroy it. Either way the response now reports the name the symbol
actually ended up with rather than the one that was asked for.
Also, in the ImDebugger memcheck edit form: the Enabled checkbox didn't mark the
memcheck as changed, and the condition combo marked it changed on every frame
the popup was open rather than when a condition was actually picked (Selectable
returns true only on click, BeginCombo stays true while open).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
memory.readString could kill the connection: it copied raw emulated memory
straight into a JSON string, so any address not holding valid UTF-8 produced an
invalid WebSocket text frame.
hle.data.remove wiped the name of a function sharing the address. Labels are
shared between data and function symbols, so removing the data label left the
function showing up in hle.func.list with an empty name.
hle.data.add silently did nothing outside a loaded module. GetModuleIndex()
returns -1 for e.g. a heap or stack address, and symbols under that index never
reach the active maps - so the add reported success while the symbol was
invisible to list, and rename/remove then failed with "No data symbol found".
Falls back to module index 0 ("no module, absolute address"), which is the right
answer for a label the user put somewhere after a memory.search.
hle.thread.list reported the thread's stack base address in a field called
initialStackSize. Renamed to initialStack, matching the SceKernelThreadInfo
field it comes from.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GZq8ZtJmFY7bkX5FVkr3P9
Same treatment as the other subscribers: thread list/wake/stop, function and
data symbol list/add/remove/rename/scan, and backtrace now route their
kernel thread, symbol map, and disassembly manager access through
Core_RunOnCPUThread() instead of touching that state directly from the
WebSocket handler thread.
Memory::IsValidRange() checks that only depend on the request's own
address/size params (not on anything CPU-thread-owned) stay outside the
queued callback and fail fast, rather than making a pointless round trip
through the CPU thread for a request already known to be invalid.
hle.func.scan carries the same unbounded-range caveat already noted for
memory.search: no cap on 'size' beyond valid memory range.
Replaced remaining `auto` locals with concrete types.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Hqm11k99viLfbJm2MkH4BH
Reverse-engineering workflows need to (1) find where an unknown value lives
in memory and (2) label what's found, neither of which the debugger API
could do before:
- memory.search (MemorySubscriber.cpp): Cheat-Engine-style scan of a memory
range for a u8/u16/u32/float value, or a byte pattern with an optional
wildcard mask.
- hle.data.list/add/remove/rename (HLESubscriber.cpp): manage ST_DATA
symbols (structs, tables, buffers), mirroring the existing hle.func.*
commands for functions. Needed a new SymbolMap::RemoveData, since only
RemoveFunction existed - added following the same pattern.
Verified live against a running PPSSPP instance (game.status, cpu.stepping,
memory.search in u32/bytes/masked-bytes modes, and the full
add/list/rename/remove data-symbol lifecycle) via Tools/wsdbg.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01XDNwPPuidmNxQGRJxBuRL6
By fixing up badly aligned addresses in HLESubscriber.cpp.
This should help eliminate any bad usage within PPSSPP itself, while
also keeping existing websocket code working.
Additionally, this makes some end addresses exclusive instead of
inclusive, which simplifies address math.
