amitools - various AmigaOS tools for other platforms

• written by Christian Vogelgsang [email protected]
• under the GNU Public License V2

Introduction

amitools is a collection of Python 3 tools that I've written to work with Amiga OS binaries and files on macOS and all other *nix-like platforms supporting Python. Windows might work as well, but is heavily untested. However, patches are welcome.

I focus with my tools on classic Amiga setups, i.e. a 680x0 based system with Amiga OS 1.x - 3.x running on it. However, this is an open project, so you can provide other Amiga support, too.

The tools are mostly developer-oriented, so a background in Amiga programming will be very helpful.

Prerequisites

• Python >= 3.6
• pip

Optional Packages

• lhafile - FS Edition: required to use .lha file scanner
• cython: (version >= 0.25) required to rebuild the native module

Install pip

First make sure to have the Python 3 package installer pip3:

macOS

On macOS you have multiple ways of installing pip3:

System Python

sudo easy_install pip

Homebrew Package Manager

With the Homebrew package manager (pip3 is included in the python3 package):

brew install python3

Linux/Ubuntu

On Linux Ubuntu use the provided packages python3-pip

sudo apt-get install python3-pip

Centos

To get pip run:

curl "https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py" -o "get-pip.py"
python3 get-pip.py

Windows with Visual Studio

• Install the latest native Windows Python >= 3.6 from python.org
• There is a special Edition for Visual Studio available that allows to compile Python 3.x modules: Install VCpython3
• Open the Command Shell of the Compiler and run

cd C:\Python3x\Scripts
pip install amitools

Windows with MSYS2

• (I use the mingw gcc compiler here to build the extension)
• On Windows with MSYS2 (use x86_64 version if possible):
  • Install with exe installer
  • Initial update is done with: (Open shell first)

pacman -Sy
pacman --needed -S bash pacman msys2-runtime

• Now close shell and re-open a new dev shell (MinGW-w64 Win64 Shell)

pacman -Su
pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-python2-pip mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc git make

Installation

The Easy Way for Users

Release Version

pip3 install amitools

Note:

• on Linux/macOS may use sudo to install for all users
• requires a host C compiler to compile the extension.

Current Version from GitHub

pip3 install -U  git+https://github.com/cnvogelg/amitools.git

This will install the latest version found in the github repository. You find the latest features but it may also be unstable from time to time.

Developers

• Follow this route if you want to hack around with the amitools codebase
• Clone the Git repo: amitools@git
• Ensure to have Cython (version >= 0.25) installed:

sudo pip3 install cython

You have multiple variants to install the tools with Python's setuptools:

• Global Install is available for all users of your system and needs root privileges

sudo python3 setup.py install

• User Install is available for your user only but does not require special privileges

python3 setup.py install --user

• Developer Setup only links this code into your installation and allows you to change/develop the code and test it immediately. (I prefer user install here)

python3 setup.py develop --user

• Run In Place allows you to run the binaries directly from the bin directory without any installation. You need make only to build the native library of vamos:

python3 setup.py build_ext -i

or if you have installed GNU make simply use:

make init       # global or virtualenv setup
make init_user  # user setup

For more help on the make targets run:

make help

Contents

The new Documentation of amitools is hosted on readthedocs

Tools

• vamos V)irtual AM)iga OS

  vamos allows you to run command line (CLI) Amiga programs on your host Mac or PC. vamos is an API level Amiga OS Emulator that replaces exec and dos calls with its own implementation and maps all file access to your local file system.

• xdftool

  Create and modify ADF or HDF disk image files.

• xdfscan

  Scan directory trees for ADF or HDF disk image files and verify the contents.

• rdbtool

  Create or modify disk images with Rigid Disk Block (RDB)

• romtool

  A tool to inspect, dissect, and build Amiga Kickstart ROM images to be used with emulators, run with soft kickers or burned into flash ROMs.

• hunktool

  The hunktool uses amitools' hunk library to load a hunk-based amiga binary. Currently, its main purpose is to display the contents of the files in various formats.

  You can load hunk-based binaries, libraries, and object files. Even overlayed binary files are supported.

• typetool

  This little tool is a companion for vamos. It allows you to dump and get further information on the API C structure of AmigaOS used in vamos.

• fdtool

  This tool reads the fd (function description) files Commodore supplied for all of their libraries and dumps their contents in different formats including a code structure used in vamos.

  You can query functions and find their jump table offset.

Python Libraries

• Hunk library amitools.binfmt.hunk

  This library allows to read Amiga OS loadSeg()able binaries and represent them in a python structure. You could query all items found there, retrieve the code, data, and bss segments and even relocate them to target addresses

• ELF library amitools.binfmt.elf

  This library allows to read a subset of the ELF format mainly used in AROS m68k.

• .fd File Parser amitools.fd

  Parse function descriptions shipped by Commodore to describe the Amiga APIs

• OFS and FFS File System Tools amitools.fs

  Create or modify Amiga's OFS and FFS file system structures

• File Scanners amitools.scan

  I've written some scanners that walk through file trees and retrieve the file data for further processing. I support file trees on the file system, in lha archives or in adf/hdf disk images