"Add To Program" and the symbol tree

[nmggithub]

I've been working with Apple binaries and, due to the nature of the DSC (dyld shared cache) I've been utilizing the "Add To Program" feature a lot. I seem to recall, at some point, discussing how the feature adds the exports of the newly-added library to the Symbol Tree (which isn't really useful). That behavior appears to have been patched out, but I cannot seem to find where I originally talked about that.

This discussion post is more of an extension of that original discussion (wherever it is). While it does not add exports, the "Add To Program" feature does seem to add the symbols of the newly-added library (as of commit 1ae4378). This is useful at times, but is also very un-useful when adding libraries like CoreFoundation and having to wade through all its symbols when searching for symbols and only wanting those from the original binary. Given that exports were excluded from the symbol table, I would think excluding the symbols in general could be possible as well.

Really, it would be nice for the "Add To Program" feature to keep track of what Listing entries came from where and searches can have additional filters based on that.

[ryanmkurtz]

I seem to recall, at some point, discussing how the feature adds the exports of the newly-added library to the Symbol Tree (which isn't really useful). That behavior appears to have been patched out, but I cannot seem to find where I originally talked about that.

#7289 (comment)

[nmggithub]

Thanks for this!

[ryanmkurtz]

I could experiment with adding the symbols into a new namespace that corresponds to the library that was added. Or, I could add loader options to control the behavior every time you Add To Program.

[nmggithub]

Both of these sound nice. Although the namespace one might have issues of some of the symbols from the library are also namespaced (e.g. mangled C++ names), as (even though there can be nested namespaces) other features that work with namespaces may also have to change to work around this and not remove the base one.

More generically, if symbols could be tagged with the code object they came from (and if that code object was the original one or not) that would probably be the most flexible option.

[ryanmkurtz]

Yea, i ran into issues with the namespace one. Can you make a new ticket asking for the general symbol tagging feature? We already have a Source associated with a symbol, but perhaps a new "Comment" like we have in the Memory Map would be appropriate.

[nmggithub]

Issue made here: #8548