Hey,
We have some .so files, am I right in thinking these are shared library files? If so is there anyway to backward engineer them? The guy who developed them for the company has now left and we don't have the source. We want to rewrite some of the application in Java, but would rather not start from complete scratch!
Thanks in advance.
probably it should be in linux or tech forum
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
This question should be? Are they not C files? I believe the original program was wrote in C.Originally Posted by vart
libraries are not C-files. They are collections of object-modules. It is irrelevant in what language the soure code was written after compilation
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
Ah, sorry. So how would you decompile them? If at all!
I would start with google
http://www.google.co.il/search?hl=en&q=decompiler&meta=
All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection,
except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
– David J. Wheeler
> am I right in thinking these are shared library files?
Yes.
> If so is there anyway to backward engineer them?
No.
Well you can, but the results are only the kind of code which a C compiler could love. It certainly won't be anything like the meaningful code which was written originally.
> The guy who developed them for the company has now left and we don't have the source.
I would suggest you conduct a very extensive and detailed search of your backups (you have backups right?)
If you dance barefoot on the broken glass of undefined behaviour, you've got to expect the occasional cut.
If at first you don't succeed, try writing your phone number on the exam paper.
Tell your company to invest in source control to avoid this problem in the future.
