6.0.0-beta.4

It's been a while since the last beta.3 release, and the main reason for this has been that beta.3 saw many more testers actively trying out v6.0.0 and pushing it to its limits. Beta.4 addresses many bugs and shortcomings found during this period. Notable changes are ARM32 and ARM64 support, auto metadata references importing, and many DX improvements that make using AsmResolver even easier than before.

A huge thanks to all the testers and contributors for their commitment to the project!

See notes below for a full changelog:

New Features

• Add ARM64 platform support, including native thunk stub codegen and exception handlers (#643)
• Add ARM32 platform support, including native thunk stub codegen (#653)
• Add Generic platform for unsupported platforms to prevent unnecessary crashes on opening/saving these types of files (#653)
• Add Platform::GetOrGeneric factory method (#653)
• Add IRuntimeFunction::UnwindInfo (#643)
• Add new GenericParameterAttributes::AllowByRefLike attribute and corresponding GenericParameter::HasAllowByRefLike property (#623, thanks @ds5678)
• Add PatchContext::WriterBase (#653)
• Add MonoPathProvider (#657)
• Add support for dotnet path resolution in Nix stores (#657)
• Add support for reading PE files from streams (#664, thanks @ds5678)
• Add MethodDefinition::VerifyMetadata that checks for (accidental) inconsistencies in metadata, including inconsistencies between static and HasThis and generic parameter counts (#642)

Improvements

• Remove owner parameter from the constructor of CilMethodBody (#641)
• Remove requirement of importing type and member references (#655)
• Let CreateTypeReference and CreateMemberReference auto import the created members (#655)
• Split IMemberDescriptor::Module into ContextModule and DeclaringModule for references and definitions respectively (#655)
• Add build targets for legacy .NET Framework 4.6.2 and 4.7.2
• Rename IExceptionDirectory::GetEntries to GetFunctions (#643)
• Add CustomAttribute::Type shortcut property (#622, thanks @ds5678)
• Add support for creating new modules with a null corlib scope to create new corlib modules (#620, #621, thanks @ds5678)
• Use built-in memory-mapped file APIs on newer .NET build targets (#619, thanks @teo-tsirpanis)
• Relax final nested type metadata table ordering restrictions to reflect runtime behavior as opposed to ECMA-335 specification (#545, #625)
• Ensure a newly created <Module> type always has RID 1 (#625)
• Add more convenience factory methods to Constant (#627, thanks @ds5678)
• Add more elaborate diagnostics to MemberNotImportedExceptions, including the location the unimported reference was detected (#626)
• Respect new Field RVA alignment requirements specified in the latest ECMA-335 augmentations (#628, thanks @Windows10CE)
• Add MakeBoxedType extension method (#629, thanks @ds5678)
• Add HasCustomAttribute overloads accepting Utf8String (#633, thanks @Sergio0694)
• Resolve some Native AOT warnings (#631, thanks @Sergio0694)
• Add validation of standalone signature contents in CilInstructionCollection::Insert(CilOpCode, StandAloneSiganture) (#642)
• Add static/instance flag checks in constructor of MethodDefinition and an overload to suppress this (#642)
• Add .NET 10 known corlib references (#645, #651, thanks @Sergio0694 and @ds5678)
• Let IMethodDefOrRef inherit from ICustomAttributeType instead of the other way around to avoid verbose casts in user code (#658, thanks @Windows10CE)
• Simplified and improved DotNetCorePathProvider and friends (#657)
• Add HideBySig method flag to newly created static class constructors (#659, thanks @ds5678)
• Add better type coercion while comparing ITypeDescriptors using SignatureComparer (#656, thanks @Windows10CE)

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue where types parsed from a Custom Attribute signature were not resolvable (61f9115)
• Fix various Custom Attribute type name parsing problems (#647, #648, thanks @Windows10CE)
• Fix an issue where ExportedTypes were not handled by MemberNameGenerator appropriately (ff455e9)
• Fix an issue where offsets for metadata streams were not updated appropriately upon writing (008b91a)
• Fix an issue in method and field accessibility tests in nested types (0942aba, thanks @ds5678)
• Fix an issue where ENC metadata streams would not be selected appropriately when a #JTD stream is present (#632, thanks @ElektroKill)
• Fix an issue where System.Enum itself would incorrectly be classified as a value type (#635. #636, thanks @AndrewSav)
• Fix an issue related to comparing forwarder types using SignatureComparer (#634, thanks @js6pak)
• Fix conflicting flag constants in MetadataBuilderFlags (#642)
• Fix an issue where UTF8 strings were not concatenated properly (#650, thanks @ds5678)
• Fix an issue related to patched segments not being serialized properly to the final PE file (#653)
• Fix an issue where unreachable exception handlers in a CIL method body would incorrectly still be included in max stack calculation (#652)
• Fix an issue related to nested types incorrectly being owned by both a ModuleDefinition and a TypeDefinition (#656, thanks @Windows10CE)
• Fix an issue where assemblies with a specific culture set would be resolved correctly but not returned to the caller (##668, thanks @Meivyn)

6.0.0-beta.3

This is a maintenance release. AsmResolver is closing in on a main release with most of the public API being stable. However, similar to 6.0.0-beta.2, this is still a pre-release and some of the public APIs are still subject to change.

Improvements

• Add IReadOnlyList<T> explicitly to collection classes for better compatibility with lower .NET targets (62ed463)
• Mark ManagedPEFileBuilder and UnmanagedPEFileBuilder's method body and field RVA data methods as virtual (166b541)
• Add PEReaderContext::Platform that can be reused throughout the PE parsing stage (0660ccb)
• Ensure Culture appears before PublicKeyToken in assembly full names to keep Mono happy (#614, thanks @ds5678)
• Rework type signature parsing in custom attribute blobs (#598, #616)
• Use built-in RuntimeTypeHandle::FromIntPtr of .NET 7+ for resolving type handles in dynamic methods when possible (#617, thanks @teo-tsirpanis)

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue where parsed TypeSignatures in a Custom Attribute would not always have the correct IsValueType property set (#598, #616)
• Fix an issue where R2R x86_64 RuntimeFunctions sections could not be read correctly for non-Windows binaries (0660ccb)
• Fix an off-by-one error that would result in some binaries with large amounts of methods and custom attributes to throw BadImageFormatExceptions (#608, #609)
• Fix an issue where invalid coded indices in a metadata table would result in exceptions upon resolving of the (invalid) referenced metadata member (1e1f9b9)

6.0.0-beta.2

This is a maintenance release that fixes some shortcomings and addresses various regressions introduced by the refactors in 6.0.0-beta.1.

Similar to 6.0.0-beta.1, this is an unstable release and the public API are still subject to change.

Improvements

• Add more nullable attributes (#575, #604, thanks @ds5678)
• Add GenericParameter::Variance property (#578, thanks @ds5678)
• SentinelTypeSignature is now a singleton (#581, thanks @ds5678)
• Add Insert and TryGetRidByKey to MetadataTable (0acd8ca)
• Add support for debug data to be read from EOF / overlay segments (#583, thanks @DaZombieKiller).
• Add EmptyDebugDataSegment (798a4ed)
• Add BinaryStreamReader::ReadBytes(int32) (5863886)
• Let IMetadataTable implement ISegment (9251f19)
• Add linear sweep blob enumerators for #Blob, #Guid, #Strings and #US streams (b7f67d0).
• Let all IMetadataRow structures implement IEquatable (aaf4d6e)
• Ensure a type's namespace is always null or non-empty (#602, thanks @ds5678)
• Drastically increase the accuracy of IMemberDefinition::IsAccessibleFrom and add analogous CanAccessDefinition methods (71d345f)

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue when cloning a method body using MemberCloner would not import calli operands properly (4a02161)
• Fix an issue where the RSDS parser would incorrectly include a null terminator byte in the PDB path (#584, thanks @Windows10CE)
• Fix an issue where export directories would be duplicated when using UnmanagedPEFileBuilder (3200229)
• Fix an issue where zero base relocation blocks were duplicated unnecessarily (fd9cbb5)
• Fix an issue where in some cases a non-empty import directory would be removed incorrectly if the UnmanagedPEFileBuilder was instructed to not trampoline the IAT (5f65621).
• Fix an issue where cloned properties and events were not included in the final ClonedMembers collection in MemberCloneResult (#592)
• Fix an issue where comparing two generic methods using SignatureComparer would result in a different conclusion depending on the order in which the two are passed onto the comparer (#595, thanks @ds5678).
• Fix an issue when computing the offset range for a single metadata row (e1f3a9c)
• Fix an issue where some ReadyToRun metadata read from a file would not be assigned an offset/rva (490176a)

6.0.0-beta.1

This marks the second major bump of AsmResolver since the rewrite. Note that this is still a pre-release and that last-minute breaking API changes may still be introduced before full release.

Summary

Version 6.0.0 of AsmResolver focuses on achieving three very important long-awaited milestones:

1. Unmanaged PE file building: A complete revamp of the underlying PE file building mechanism has finally allowed for a long-awaited UnmanagedPEFileBuilder: A robust yet flexible foundation for reconstructing fully native PE files as well as mixed-mode .NET modules. We are not quite there yet with integrating it into the AsmResolver.DotNet package, but it should pave the way for it as well as help with processing ReadyToRun- and NativeAOT-compiled files in the future. See the new documentation for details.

2. .NET Framework 3.5 support: Previously, AsmResolver targeted .NET standard 2.0, allowing developers to use a .NET Framework version as low as 4.6.1. While 4.8.1 is installed by default on modern Windows machines and we are approaching the release of .NET 9, many use-cases still require older versions of .NET (in particular, game-modding and dynamic code deobfuscation). With the awesome help of the people behind the @MonoMod project, we have been finally able to make AsmResolver 6.0.0 fully compatible with .NET Framework 3.5.

3. API simplification and improvements: The existing public API also has undergone many quality-of-life improvements to ensure a better developer experience. This includes removing many of the redundant interfaces, as well as flattening a lot of namespaces to reduce the number of using directives required for typical usecases of AsmResolver. Performance has also been improved a lot in various areas, partially thanks to the new concept of RuntimeContexts. And of course, many bug fixes have been squashed.

Important to note is that this release introduces breaking changes with respect to 5.x.x. In the following, the important changes are listed:

New Features

• Add UnmanagedPEFileBuilder, allowing for PEImages containing only native code or both native and managed .NET code to be built with little effort (#554).
• It is now much easier to customize existing PE file builders (or create your own) to get full control over the final PE file layout thanks to the new PEFileBuilder base class.
• Add .NET 3.5 support, using MonoMod.Backports (#536, #540, #544, #450, #439, with the help of @MonoMod and @Windows10CE).
• Add the concept of RuntimeContexts, allowing for .NET modules to be loaded under a specific .NET runtime or AppHost bundle context, which avoids many type resolution problems, drastically reduces memory footprint and also increases overall performance (#471, #537).
• Add PEImage::ToPEFile().
• Add TrampolineTableBuffer, allowing for IAT trampolines to be built easily.
• Add TypeMemoryLayout::IsReferenceOrContainsReferences flag, equivalent to RuntimeHelpers::IsReferenceOrContainsReferences<T> but determined statically (#530, #539).
• Add BundleAssemblyResolver (2fc1872)
• Add SetAccessorMethods to PropertyDefinition and EventDefinition (#555, thanks @ds5678).
• Add AggressiveInlining, AggressiveOptimization and HasSecurityMitigations flags to MethodDefinition and MethodImplAttributes (bf80344).
• Add IInputFile::BaseAddress (a1af121)

Improvements

• Remove many redundant interfaces (e.g., IPEFile and IPEImage). Developers are expected to use their immediate implementing class (i.e., PEFile and PEImage) (#445, #561, #562).
• Flatten many namespaces, drastically reducing the required using directives for typical AsmResolver usecases (#446, #560).
• Use EmptyErrorListener.Instance for reading input files by default (#472, #564).
• Remove System.Text.Json as a hard dependency requirement, making the library more portable for older .NET targets ( #450, #538).
• Add .NET 9 as a known corlib (#548, thanks @ds5678).
• Add correct interpretation of #Schema and #JTD metadata streams (#557, thanks @ElektroKill).
• Add FunctionPointerTypeSignature support for SignatureComparer::GetHashCode (#551, thanks @BadRyuner).
• Rewrite IconResource into a more intuitive API that also supports language-specific icons and cursors (#565).
• Let PESection::Name accept arbitrary UTF8 strings (#454).
• Add OptionalHeader::SetDataDirectory (7b27c91).
• Add SetDataDirectory.CreateForSegment (7b27c91.)

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue where EnC metadata streams are looked up using case insensitive name lookup (#557, thanks @ElektroKill).
• Fix an issue where Win32 resources were inserted into a PE's root resource directory out-of-order, causing version info and icons to not be interpreted by Windows correctly (#552, #553).
• Fix a data race in caching mechanism of StringsStream and UserStringsStream (b1ded1f).
• Fix an issue related to reading and writing signed compressed integers for lower bounds in array type signatures (c7bc9f6).

Documentation

• Documentation on the new PE file building mechanism was added.
• The AsmResolver.PE.Win32Resource package now has its dedicated documentation section.

5.5.1

This is an incremental maintenance release that adds .NET 8.0 as an official target and fixes issues related to type signatures, CIL optimizations, as well as some rare edge cases in .NET metadata directory parsing.

New Features

• Add support for importing function pointer type signatures via reflection (#523, thanks @Windows10CE).
• Add BinaryStreamWriter::AlignRelative (af2e49d)
• Add .NET 8.0 target.

Bug Fixes

• Fix a couple issues regarding hash computation of generic instance and custom modifier type signatures in SignatureComparer (#512, thanks @rstarkov)
• Fix an issue where optimizing ldloca and ldarga opcodes would not shorten to their shorter variants (9ab4e94)
• Fix an issue where the same metadata members could be added twice to the exact same collection, resulting in ownership problems (#513)
• Fix an issue where .NET modules containing a metadata directory at an unaligned offset would read stream headers incorrectly (af2e49d).

5.5.0

This version brings rudimentary low-level .NET ReadyToRun (R2R) parsing and writing to AsmResolver, allowing you to locate and read native code of precompiled managed method bodies (see documentation). Additionally, basic Span<T> support was added to primitives like IDataSource and Utf8String for newer .NET runtime targets (netstandard 2.1 and above), and some new convenience APIs were added. Finally, some bugfixes were implemented, increasing general stability of the library.

New Features

• Add support for low level .NET ReadyToRun assembly parsing (#294, #495). See documentation.
• Add basic Span<T> support for IDataSources and Utf8String (#483, thanks @DaZombieKiller).
• Add option to suppress .NET resource data deduplication (#492).
• Add TypeDefinition::GetConstructor, MethodDefinition::CreateConstructor and similar (#480).
• Add ReferenceTable primitive segment class, representing structures like VTables that can be directly used as a writable ISegment.
• Add BinaryStreamReader::RemainingLength.
• Reduce allocations of null SegmentReferences.
• Add netstandard2.1 target.

Bug Fixes

• TypeReference::IsImportedInModule now correctly takes its resolution scope into account (#497).
• Type resolution now correctly first checks whether the resolution scope refers to the current assembly (7403692).
• TypeNameParser now correctly does not return fully imported types, but they can still be resolved using .Resolve() (#497).
• MemberCloner now correctly fixes cross-references to included System.Type arguments in Custom Attributes (#482, #493).
• Fixed an issue where .NET resource data with a malformed header would crash the parser (#492).
• Fixed an issue where ZeroesDataSource would clear out too much data in the buffer provided to ReadBytes (thanks @DaZombieKiller)
• Fixed an issue where BitList would incorrectly accept negative indices (#478).
• Fixed an issue where duplicated members would not be added even when preserving metadata tokens (#478).
• Fixed an issue where members with manually assigned tokens would not be saved correctly when assembly had no backing .NET directory (#478)
• Fixed a race condition in the caching mechanism of assembly resolution (61b6ddf)
• Fixed a race condition in the caching mechanism of input file services (61b6ddf)
• Fixed an issue where string operands in IL pretty printed instructions were not escaped properly (6e039b9)

Minor Breaking Changes

• Remove TlsCallbackCollection, replaced with ReferenceTable.
• TlsDirectory::CallbackFunctions is now of type ReferenceTable.
• IDotNetDirectory::ManagedNativeHeader is now of the more specific segment type IManagedNativeHeader.

5.4.0

This release includes support for PE certificate tables, PE forwarder exports, as well as various quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Check out the documentation and the full change-log below:

New Features

• Add read/write support for PE certificate tables (#451).
• Add support for arbitrary symbols to be references in NativeMethodBody (#444, #449).
• Let assembly resolution mechanism respect ModuleReaderParameters::WorkingDirectory (#438, #441).
• Add read/write support for ExportedSymbol::IsForwarder (#437, #440).
• Add ManagedPEFileBuilder::ErrorListener (#468).
• Allow for ITypeDescriptor::Scope to be null and of type ModuleDefinition. (#466)
• Add language identifiers for Version Info win32 resources (#457)
• Add support for attaching multiple listeners to the MemberCloner (#461)
• Add DotNetRuntimeInfo::GetDefaultCorLib and KnownCorlibs::FromRuntimeInfo (#462)
• PEFile::CreateReaderAtFileOffset now supports reading from EOF data (5821428).
• Add Source Link (#469, thanks @ds5678)

Bug fixes

• Fix an issue when resolution scope of a type reference set to 0 when the coded index to the current module was meant instead (#459, #466).
• Fix an issue where field RVA rows were not always correctly updated when writing unchanged serialized PEs (#468).
• Fix an issue where win32 resource VersionInfo tables were not correctly aligned to the next 4-byte boundary, resulting in some of the resource to be trimmed away when rebuilding (#456).
• Fix an issue where the Culture= part of AssemblyDescriptor.FullName was not included in the output (#458).
• Fix an issue where PE section names would result in spurious "name too long" exceptions when containing unconventional UTF-8 code points (#453, #455).
• Fix an issue where GetImpliedMemoryLayout would stack-overflow with unresolved generic parameter type signatures (#447, #448).
• Fix an issue where ModuleReaderParameters were not passed along correctly in ModuleDefinition::FromBytes (bbf5781)

5.3.0

This version is mostly a maintenance version with performance improvements and bug fixes. Developers of .NET obfsucators and deobfuscators will also be happy to know that ManagedPEImageBuilder now accepts any IErrorListener. This should make it easier to ignore any invalid metadata that is introduced to the assembly model (e.g., by passing in an EmptyErrorListener). Finally, a migration from readthedocs to DocFX was made, giving a new home and look to the documentation. Let us know what you think of it!

New Features

• Add support for arbitrary IErrorListener objects as opposed to just DiagnosticBags in ManagedPEImageBuilder (#367, thanks @ds5678 for the help!).
• Add LazyVariable<TOwner, TValue>, reducing the number of allocations made by AsmResolver's internals significantly for larger binaries (#428)
• Add Platform::Is32Bit, Platform::Is64Bit and Platform::PointerSize (#430)
• Add ZeroesSegment and ZeroesDataSource for creating, reading and writing memory-efficient segments containing only zero bytes (#430).
• Migrate documentation to DocFX with full API reference (2545e1a).

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where SignatureComparer::GetHashCode for assembly descriptors did not respect the configuration flags passed into the constructor (#427, #429).
• Field RVA reader now correctly supports reading the data for IntPtr and UIntPtr typed fields (#430).
• Fixed an issue where reading from a section that is empty on the disk would throw even if the section has a non-zero virtual size (#430).
• Fixed an issue where entries in an import descriptor were not read correctly if OriginalFirstThunk = 0. This is the case for many packed executables such as UPX packed binaries (#431, #432)

Deprecations

• PEImageBuildContext::DiagnosticBag is superseded by PEImageBuildContext::IErrorListener.
• The constructor PEImageBuildResult taking a DiagnosticBag is superseded by the one taking an IErrorListener.

Minor Breaking Changes

• The signature for IFieldRvaDataReader::ResolveFieldData has changed slightly. See the documentation for how to use the new interface (#430).

5.2.0

New Features

• Add TypeSignature::IsCompatibleWith and TypeSignature::IsAssignableTo methods (#421)
• Add support for patching AppHost / SingleFileHost files without requiring the original SDK template file (#420, #424)
• Add support for metadata tokens and unmanaged entry points in DotNetDirectory (#422)
• Add Parameter::GetOrCreateDefinition() (#418, thanks @ElektroKill)
• Add read support for PDB modules (#412)
• Add read support for many more PDB symbol and leaf record types (#412)
• Add basic metadata properties to PdbImage (e28df25)
• Add OptionalHeader::SetDataDirectory helper method (8357a77)
• Add CallingConventionSignature::CallingConvention convenience property that masks out the used convention from Attributes (#414)
• Add undocumented CallingConvention::NativeVarArg (#414)

Bug Fixes

• Fix an issue related to metadata token preservation of MemberRefParents (caeef35)
• Fix an issue with MethodSignature's sentinel parameter type preservation (#413, #414).
• Fix ParameterCollection::ThisParameter's parameter type for generic instance types (e27b6e8, thanks @ElektroKill)
• Fix MethodSignatureBase::GetTotalParameterCount() for ExplicitThis signatures (dae9909, thanks @ElektroKill)

Deprecations

• All constructors of BundlerParameters are superseded by BundlerParameters::FromTemplate and BundlerParameters::FromExistingFile.
• Assignments of DotNetDirectory::EntryPoint using an uint are obsoleted and should be replaced with a construction of a DotNetEntryPoint structure.

Minor Breaking ABI Changes

• Remove spurious CallingConventionSignature::IsSentinel (#414)
• Change property type of DotNetDirectory::EntryPoint from uint to DotNetEntryPoint DU struct.

5.1.0

New Features

• Add fluent patching API, allowing for easy and quick binary patches on PE files as well as individual segments (#403, #405). Check out the documentation.
• Add option to preserve spurious metadata streams and their order (#394, #406)
• Add generic ModuleDefinition::LookupMember<T> and ModuleDefinition::TryLookupMember<T> methods (#392, #402)
• Add TypeDefinition::IsModuleType (#391, thanks @sunnamed434)
• Add rudimentary custom attribute validation, avoiding the accidental construction of incorrect attribute signatures (#389, #407)

Bug Fixes

• Fix generic custom attributes reader errors (#397, #401)
• Fix GetModuleType() behavior for .NET Core / .NET 5+ modules (#395, #396)
• Fix .NET runtime detection when multiple corlibs references are present in the binary (a0bb1df)

Deprecations

• CodeSegment is now deprecated. Use the DataSegment combined with the new patching API for address fixups.

Other

• Fixed some spelling mistakes in the documentation (#398, #400, thanks @Svenskithesource)