Consider to use external library for the web-server

[XVilka]

Currently, Rizin implements all features for the Web server by itself, thus prone to more mistakes in handling network protocols, lagging behind SSL/TLS evolution, etc.

I propose to consider to use existing and wide-spread small embeddable C library that implements all of that and is being updated in lockstep with the Web/protocols progress. Ideally, we should find something that is LGPL/MIT/BSD-licensed.

Possible candidates are:

• https://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd/ (LGPLv2.1+)
• https://github.com/davidmoreno/onion (dual GPLv2+ and Apache)
• https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/libsoup (LGPL2) - though this one kind of heavy

See these files that are to be changed:

• librz/core/rtr_http.c
• librz/socket/socket_http.c
• librz/socket/socket_http_server.c

Note, that we should avoid too many unnecessary dependencies and still be able to build the rizin statically and be sure it works the same under all supported platforms - Linux, Windows, MacOS, *BSD, Haiku, etc.

Speaking of libmicrohttpd it is relatively small:

rizin/misc/libmicrohttpd-0.9.71 
[i] ℤ cloc src                                                                                                                                                                                                                    12:48:38 
     253 text files.
     238 unique files.                                          
      32 files ignored.

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.82  T=0.17 s (1263.8 files/s, 532382.2 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                              159           6186          12553          53536
C/C++ Header                    54           2570          10394           6377
make                             8            221             44           1213
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                           221           8977          22991          61126
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rizin/misc/libmicrohttpd-0.9.71 
[i] ℤ cloc lib .                                                                                                                                                                                                                  12:48:42 
     418 text files.
     381 unique files.                                          
     120 files ignored.

1 error:
Unable to read:  lib

github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.82  T=0.34 s (864.2 files/s, 539316.6 lines/s)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                         files          blank        comment           code
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C                                  167           6455          12815          54953
Bourne Shell                        15           7674           7985          42745
m4                                  34           1536            483          16484
TeX                                  1            814           3708           7205
C/C++ Header                        55           2625          10451           6435
make                                14            255             52           1366
Pascal                               7            281            451            996
SVG                                  1              1              1            112
Windows Resource File                1              2              1             39
PowerShell                           1              7              0             31
sed                                  2              0              0             16
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                               298          19650          35947         130382
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
rizin/misc/libmicrohttpd-0.9.71 

[karliss]

What is the remaining use for webserver in rizin. I thought that webui was removed.

[XVilka]

rz-pipe through http:// protocol/URI

[jvoisin]

What about using windbg or gdb/llbm protocol instead of http?

[ret2libc]

@jvoisin would windbg/gdb/llbm be flexible enough to allow rz-pipe through them? (i know nothing about those protocols, sorry).

[yossizap]

The GDB/LLDB/WinDBG protocols are more suitable for debugging processes and aren't easy to read, debug and extend. I think that the idea here is to share rizin's stdin/stdout/stderr over a simple protocol with custom commands. It's possible to implement any functionality in rizin using gdb's "monitor" command that passes a string to a custom command implementation in the interpreter(OpenOCD does this) but a gdb frontend connecting to a server with this implementation will only be able to send commands using target remote | command so I don't really see the advantage compared to http.

fyi, it's already possible to run rizin as a gdbserver(and connect to it with lldb/gdb/another instance of rizin) for debugging using =g

$ rizin -
[0x00000000]> =g?
|Usage:  =[g] [...] # gdb server
| gdbserver:
| =g port file [args]   listen on 'port' debugging 'file' using gdbserver
| =g! port file [args]  same as above, but debug protocol messages (like gdbserver --remote-debug)

not sure if this is actually stable

[XVilka]

GDB protocol is a mess with a mix of XML, text, and binary data. WinDbg is slightly better but isn't well documented. If you want to use the specifically designed protocol, it's probably better to just serialize some structures like current Projects feature do and send them over the network.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Considering a lot has probably changed since its creation, we kindly ask you to check again if the issue you reported is still relevant in the current version of rizin. If it is, update this issue with a comment, otherwise it will be automatically closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Considering a lot has probably changed since its creation, we kindly ask you to check again if the issue you reported is still relevant in the current version of rizin. If it is, update this issue with a comment, otherwise it will be automatically closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically closed because marked as stale and it has not been updated since then. If the issue is still relevant, feel free to re-open it or open a new one.