Stabs format parser

Description

Contributor guide

Tech stack

c

Domain

clitooling

Issue type

feature

DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.

4

Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.

over 1 week

Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.

stale

ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.

unclear

Prerequisites

C programmingDebug symbol formatsRadare2 plugin development

Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.

20

Research direction

The issue requests implementing a parser for the STABS debug format. The main resource is the GNU STABS documentation (https://sourceware.org/gdb/current/onlinedocs/stabs/). To start, investigate how radare2 currently handles other debug formats like DWARF (see libraries such as libr/bin/format/dwarf/ or similar). Understand the existing plugin system for binary parsing in radare2. Look at any previous attempts or discussions in the issue comments. The work involves writing C code to parse STABS symbols and integrate with radare2's internal structures.