Mach-O is the format macOS uses for executables and dynamic libraries.
It seems Apple no longer hosts documentation on its format (Wikipedia links to this archive). I did find this repo, which helpfully archived the original Apple PDF (Archive) and has a version of it adapted to markdown.
Alternatively we could just use ELFSharp (which contains Mach-O support) for Biohazrd, although this could put us in the same position as #1 where it does way more than we need and requires understanding the Mach-O spec to use properly anyway.
Library archives
Additionally we should support macOS static library archives. Like with everyone else, macOS .a files are a variant of the !<arch> format. Unlike everyone else they use the BSD variant since macOS is BSD-derived. Thankfully this different in format is somewhat easy to identify (there won't be any index file or longname files, and file names begin with #1/ with the real file name being part of the data portion of the file.)
In a BSD archive the equivalent of the index file (__.SYMDEF) is technically optional. macOS might use a variant that is sorted, which is denoted by the file being named __.SYMDEF SORTED. (This was used in the sample library I grabbed from my LLVM build.)
macOS can also apparently have a variant of the symbol table called __.SYMDEF_64, although it's unclear when it appears. (It wasn't there in the sample library.)
The actual object files appear to be Mach-O.
Mach-O is the format macOS uses for executables and dynamic libraries.
It seems Apple no longer hosts documentation on its format (Wikipedia links to this archive). I did find this repo, which helpfully archived the original Apple PDF (Archive) and has a version of it adapted to markdown.
Alternatively we could just use ELFSharp (which contains Mach-O support) for Biohazrd, although this could put us in the same position as #1 where it does way more than we need and requires understanding the Mach-O spec to use properly anyway.
Library archives
Additionally we should support macOS static library archives. Like with everyone else, macOS
.afiles are a variant of the!<arch>format. Unlike everyone else they use the BSD variant since macOS is BSD-derived. Thankfully this different in format is somewhat easy to identify (there won't be any index file or longname files, and file names begin with#1/with the real file name being part of the data portion of the file.)In a BSD archive the equivalent of the index file (
__.SYMDEF) is technically optional. macOS might use a variant that is sorted, which is denoted by the file being named__.SYMDEF SORTED. (This was used in the sample library I grabbed from my LLVM build.)macOS can also apparently have a variant of the symbol table called
__.SYMDEF_64, although it's unclear when it appears. (It wasn't there in the sample library.)The actual object files appear to be Mach-O.