LibVolcano

LibVolcano (or simply, Volcano) is a C library for macOS-related shenanigans. Performing low-level tasks such as reading and writing process memory can get complex quickly and require lots of boilerplate code. The goal of LibVolcano is simple: to provide a clean, consistent, and powerful API on top of numerous macOS system APIs.

#include <Volcano/Log.h>
#include <Volcano/ObjectiveC.h>

// ...

@implementation VCExample

+ (BOOL)alwaysNo {
  return NO;
}

@end

void __attribute__((constructor)) init() {
  struct VcLogContext *lc = VcLogCreateContext();

  VcLog(lc, "Module loaded successfully");

  VcObjcReplaceMethod("NSString", "hasPrefix", "VCExample", "alwaysNo");
  VcLog(lc, "Replaced NSString/hasPrefix; will always return NO");
}

A simple example showing Objective-C method replacement at runtime.

Disclaimer: This is not a production-ready library. It is the result of my attempts to cut down on repeated code in various projects of mine. There will issues, and I probably don't have time to fix all of them. That being said...

I hope you find this library useful, and if you do, please let me know!

Building

Given that this is a library for macOS-specific mischief, it obviously only compiles on macOS. However, since LibVolcano uses CMake, obtaining a macOS machine should be the hardest part of the build process. To build, simply configure CMake and build:

$ cmake -S . -B build
$ cmake --build build -j8

Conventions

This project follows a handful of conventions, some typical and some unusual:

• Type aliases via typedef are used rather frequently to alias primitive and system types. This may be upsetting to some, but I prefer to see consistently named types in my code, and I wrote this library for myself after all.

• All functions are prefixed with Vc and an additional group prefix, for example VcObjc and VcKern for Objective-C and kernel related functions, respectively.

• Source code is formatted using the LLVM clang-format style.

Documentation

Documentation can be built by running doxygen in the project root.

License

Copyright 2021 Jon Palmisciano. Licensed under the 3-clause BSD license. For more information, see LICENSE.txt.