Porting from IDAPython 6.x-7.3, to 7.4

Intended audience

IDAPython developers

The problem

IDA 7.4 turns off IDA 6.x API backwards-compatibility by default.

Although there is a trivial way of turning 6.x backwards-compatibility back on, this should be considered a temporary measure, until the code is ported to the newer APIs (that have started shipping with IDA 7.0, back in 2017.)

Supporting IDA 7.x

Note that the new APIs have been baked in IDAPython since IDA 7.0, meaning that by porting existing IDAPython code according to this guide, you will not just support IDA 7.4: the ported code will also work in IDA 7.3, 7.2, 7.1 and 7.0.

This is a complementary guide

A general-purpose porting guide shipped at the time, which covers a great deal of the changes and is enough to port C/C++ code.

Alas, we now see that it is insufficient when it comes to accompanying developers in the task of porting their IDAPython code to the newer APIs, simply because IDAPython has some specific concepts & constructs, that require special attention.

That being said, this very guide should be considered as a complement to the original guide, and not as a replacement.

The guide

Note: that all qualified names below use their originating IDAPython module's name (e.g., ida_kernwin) instead of the 'umbrella' idaapi module.

The following types have been moved/renamed:

 class my_choose_t(ida_kernwin.Choose):
     [...]
     def OnDeleteLine(self, indices):
         new_items = []
         for idx, item in enumerate(self.items):
             if idx not in indices:
                 new_items.append(item)
         self.items = new_items
         return [Choose.ALL_CHANGED] + indices

 v = ida_kernwin.get_current_viewer()
 thing = ida_kernwin.get_highlight(v)
 if thing and thing[1]:
     identifier = thing[0]

 if filters:
     fmt = "FILTER %s\n%s" % (filters, fmt)
 ask_file(forsave, defdir, fmt)

    import ida_range
    rs = ida_range.rangeset_t()
    if get_func_ranges(rs, pfn) == ida_idaapi.BADADDR:
        return False
    limits.start_ea = rs.begin().start_ea
    limits.end_ea = rs.begin().end_ea

 insn = ida_ua.insn_t()
 if ida_ua.decode_insn(insn, ea):
     x = ida_ua.map_code_ea(insn, insn.ops[opnum])
 else:
     x = ida_idaapi.BADADDR

idc.py

The following table concerns the idc.py module, where a lot of the compatibility layer was removed.

Note:

• when the before and after have no parentheses, it means they take the exact same parameters.
• when the before and after have parentheses, it means they take somewhat different parameters, and thus one has to be careful when porting
• as you will see, quite a few functions that were present in the idc module, have a replacement directly in another, upstream ida_* module.