formats: verify every offered processor name against a real IDA

2026-07-25T22:04:38Z

The curated list was written from the procs/ directory listing. Two of the twenty names were wrong, and wrong here is not a soft failure: IDA REFUSES to open the database (rc=4) with nothing useful said. The load dialog would have handed people a dead end from inside the UI that exists to rescue them — the same silent-failure class the dialog was built to kill. h8 -> h8300 (h8.so is the module FILENAME, not a processor name) sparc -> sparcb / sparcl (and SPARC has endianness variants, like MIPS/PPC) Also probed the aliases people reach for first: arm64, aarch64, mips, m68k are all invalid. 'arm' covers AArch64 (verified: an AArch64 blob analyses to 35 functions under -parm), so those names now live in the human labels, where the filter still finds them — typing "arm64" finds ARM, "m68k" finds 68k, "mips" finds both endiannesses. tools/verify_procs.py does the check: open a scratch blob with -p, read back inf_get_procname(), compare. Fresh temp dir per name, because once a database exists IDA ignores the load switches and every name after the first would "pass". 21/21 verified. tests: +11 formats, including the verified-set guard (adding a processor without re-running the script fails on purpose) and checks that the rejected aliases are NOT offered but ARE still findable by typing them. 32/0 formats, 199/0 scenarios.

loading: ask how to load an unrecognised file, like IDA does

2026-07-25T22:00:19Z

Last commit let you SAY how to load a blob. This one notices when you should have. Interactive IDA pops a dialog when no loader matches; we silently loaded as x86 at 0 and analysed to nothing, so the flag only helped people who already knew they needed it — which is exactly the people who don't need help. formats.sniff() recognises the formats IDA definitely handles (ELF, PE, Mach-O, dex, wasm, ar, COFF, Intel HEX, S-records). Anything else gets LoadOptionsScreen: a filterable processor list with human labels, a load-address field, Enter to accept, Esc to load it the way IDA would have anyway. Deliberate asymmetry: the sniff only claims formats it is sure about. A false "unknown" costs one dismissible dialog; a false "known" is the silent wrong answer this exists to kill. Esc is always an escape hatch. The list offers 20 processors, not IDA's 73 — most of the rest are museum pieces, and a name typed into the filter that matches nothing is taken literally so nothing is actually unreachable. Endianness is spelled out (arm vs armb) because getting it backwards is the most common route to zero functions. Asked only when nobody has answered yet: not with --processor, not in project mode (entries carry their own), and not when a database exists — the .i64 already records how the image was loaded. Textual trap worth recording: the screen stored the file size in self._size, which is Widget's own backing field for outer_size. Assigning an int to it crashes layout with "'int' object has no attribute 'region'" from deep inside _set_dirty, nowhere near the cause. Same family as the _render collision. The paragraph conversion now lives in exactly one place (formats.load_args); BinaryRef and launch both call it. Verified on a real AArch64 blob: dialog appears, filtering to "arm" leaves two entries, base 0x8000000 accepted -> "-parm -b800000" -> 35 functions at 0x8002440. An ELF never asks, and neither does a blob that already has a .i64. tests: new tests/test_formats.py (21) and a load_options scenario asserting the dialog stays out of the way for a recognised binary. 199/0 scenarios, 39/0 project, 30/0 project UI, 36/0 index, 27/0 pool, 21/0 formats.

ida-tui.git/idatui/formats.py, branch main

formats: verify every offered processor name against a real IDA

loading: ask how to load an unrecognised file, like IDA does