ghidra_app

Build a working Ghidra application for macOS with a bundled Java JDK.

The build script does not compile Ghidra. Instead, it downloads the binary release of Ghidra and the required Java JDK and packages them as a double-clickable Mac application.

This works with both Intel x86-64 and Apple arm64 Macs.

Currently, the claim about not compiling Ghidra is a partial lie. If you are building Ghidra.app for arm64, then the arm64 native executables Ghidra uses will be built by default. This is because the Ghidra distribution contains prebuilt binaries for x86-64 macOS, but not for arm64 macOS. The -b flag can be used to build native executables, regardless of the architecture. Similarly, the -B flag can be used to not build native executables (i.e., use the prebuilt binaries instead).

Hopefully, arm64 native executables will start being included and this script will return to simply assembling the macOS application wrapper.

Usage

Clone the repository and run the build.bash script.

$ git clone https://github.com/stevecheckoway/ghidra_app.git
$ cd ghidra_app
$ ./build.bash

At this point, you should have Ghidra.app in the ghidra_app directory.

The script will download Ghidra (currently version 11.0 which is the most recent at time of writing, 2024-01-09) and OpenJDK 17. Together, these take more than 450 MB.

The downloads will be cached for future use in the cache directory. You may delete this directory after building if you wish.

Options

There are a few options. You probably want the defaults.

Usage: ./build.bash [OPTION...]

Options:
  -a arch build Ghidra.app for x86-64 or arm64 [default: detect]
  -b      build native executables [default for arm64]
  -B      use prebuilt native executables [default for x86-64]
  -f      force building Ghidra.app even if it already exists
  -h      show this help
  -o app  use 'app' as the output name instead of Ghidra.app

Credits

This build script was heavily based on Yifan Lu's Ghidra OSX Launch Script. The Ghidra icon file was taken directly from Lu's GitHub Gist.

The approach for cross compiling the native executables came from Robin Lambertz. The init.gradle file is a modified version of their mac_arm_64.init.gradle file.