Igor’s Tip of the Week #150: Extract function – Hex Rays

Written by Igor Skochinsky | Jul 27, 2023

When you open a decompilable file in IDA, you get this somewhat mysterious item in the Help menu:

And if you invoke it, it shows an even more mysterious dialog:

So, what is it and when it is useful?

Originally this feature was added to the decompiler to make decompiler bug reporting easier: oftentimes. a decompiler issue cannot really be reproduced or debugged without having the original database. However, in some cases sharing the whole database is impractical or impossible:

Whole database may be very large and difficult to share
parts of the database may contain private or confidential information
the rest of the database is not really relevant to the issue and only adds noise

This feature leaves just the current function plus maybe some potentially relevant information in the database. It can then be sent to support for investigation and fixing, either by email or directly from IDA via Help > Report a bug or an issue…