frida-pharo

Pharo/Smalltalk bindings for Frida, the dynamic instrumentation toolkit.

The binding is auto-generated from Frida's GObject-Introspection metadata (Frida-1.0.gir) by the shared frida_bindgen_core generator, and vendored as Tonel source under src/FridaPharo/. At runtime it talks to a hand-linked libfrida-core shared library through Pharo's uFFI. There is no C glue: Frida is initialised with the GLib runtime and its GMainContext is driven directly from Smalltalk (FridaMainLoop), so async completions and signals dispatch on the Pharo thread.

Loading the bindings

The generated Tonel sources load into any Pharo 11+ image via Metacello, straight from GitHub:

Metacello new
	baseline: 'FridaPharo';
	repository: 'github://frida/frida-pharo:main';
	load.

Nothing to compile: on first use, FridaLibrary downloads the prebuilt libfrida-core for the current platform and pinned frida version from the GitHub release, verifies it against SHA256SUMS, and caches it next to the image. So Frida localDevice just works.

To use a local build instead (contributors, or an unreleased frida version), set the FRIDA_CORE_LIB environment variable to its path — it takes precedence over the download.

Usage

"Enumerate the processes running on the local device."
device := Frida localDevice.
(device enumerateProcesses: nil) do: [ :process |
	Transcript showLn: process pid printString, ' ', process name ].

"Attach, inject a script, and receive its messages."
session := device attach: (device getProcessByName: 'Twitter') pid.
script := session createScript: 'Interceptor.attach(Module.getExportByName(null, "open"), {
	onEnter(args) { send(args[0].readUtf8String()); }
});'.
script onMessage: [ :message | Transcript showLn: message ].
script load.

"Call RPC exports exposed by the script via rpc.exports."
result := script exports add: 3 to: 4.

"Subscribe to any GObject signal; the block runs on the Pharo thread."
session on: 'detached' do: [ :args | Transcript showLn: 'detached: ', args printString ].

"Spawn, instrument at start-up, then resume."
pid := device spawn: '/bin/ls'.
session := device attach: pid.

"Options are set with a configuration block."
pid := device spawn: '/bin/sh' options: [ :o |
	o argv: #('/bin/sh' '-c' 'echo hi').
	o cwd: '/tmp' ].
"... createScript / load ..."
device resume: pid.

Async Frida operations (attach:, spawn:, enumerateProcesses:, ...) are exposed as ordinary synchronous-looking Pharo methods: the call is scheduled on the GMainContext that FridaMainLoop drives, and the calling Pharo process blocks on a semaphore until the loop's dispatch delivers the result — on the Pharo thread — or raises a FridaError.

Building from source

Only needed for development — end users get a prebuilt library automatically (see Loading the bindings). The prebuilts themselves are produced by the Release prebuilt libraries workflow, which links the same tools/build-lib.sh against frida-core's published devkit for each platform.

make all performs the full loop end to end:

1. lib — tools/build-lib.sh links a frida-core devkit's single self-contained archive into one uFFI-loadable shared library (whole-archive + the glib symbol aliasing, limited to the exports the binding imports, then dead-stripped). Pass DEVKIT=<extracted devkit dir> — a published devkit, or one built from a frida-core tree with --with-devkits=core when testing unreleased changes.
2. generate — runs the Python generator over the .gir files, refreshing the Tonel sources under src/FridaPharo/ (needs a frida-core build tree for the GObject .gir set; FRIDA_CORE/FRIDA_MACHINE).
3. image — loads the baseline into a fresh Pharo image.
4. test — runs the SUnit suite headless.

Override the defaults on the command line as needed, e.g.:

make lib DEVKIT=/path/to/frida-core-devkit
make generate FRIDA_CORE=/path/to/frida-core FRIDA_MACHINE=linux-x86_64

Layout

Path	What it is
frida_pharo/	The generator: thin model subclasses, data-only customization.py, type-agnostic codegen.py.
frida-bindgen/	The shared frida_bindgen_core generator (submodule).
src/FridaPharo/	Vendored generated Tonel sources + the hand-written runtime base classes (FridaObject, FridaMainLoop, FridaSignalSubscription, FridaVariant, ...).
src/FridaPharo-Tests/	The SUnit suite.
tools/build-lib.sh	Reproducible frida-core static-to-shared link step.