Versioned plugin directories

[trufae]

As long as all the patch releases are abi stable i think that r2 should use a directory named 5.7.x instead of 5.7.0, 5.7.2 .. this way we wont need to recompile plugins everytime.

Status

r2 can load plugins found in all those directories, but most plugins are using r2 -qv to deteremine the directory to write the plugins and those must be updated to not break r2pm, it is important to bear in mind that walking plugin directories is expensive, and its better to reduce the amount of items:

• ~/.local/share/radare2/plugins # should be ~/.local/lib/radare2/plugins/ ..?
• lib/radare2/
• lib/radare2/5.7.x
• lib/radare2/5.7.8

To something like:

• foreach lib in [/usr/lib/radare2/ ~/.lib/radare2]
  • 5.7.x/*
  • 5.7.8/*

Best Effort

Probably the best option is the simplest. but also the most drastic.

• /usr/lib/radare2/5.7.x/*
• ~/.local/lib/radare2/5.7.x/*

The x is on purpose. as it doesnt needs to recompile the plugins because its abi stable.

Env vars

We should define a solid naming for all those paths that makes it simple for r2 and users to work with plugins and switching between user and system paths:

R2_LIBR_PLUGINS=/usr/local/lib/radare2/5.7.6
R2_USER_PLUGINS=/Users/pancake/.local/share/radare2/plugins

By changing R2_LIBR_PLUGINS to contain the abi version it should be enough to make most plugins install properly i think

[trufae]

ref #20545

[trufae]

Another problem that is not solved with this approach is the ability to have multiple versions of the same plugin and be able to select one specific version. Plugins have their own version and they are tied to one specific version of r2 (specified by arm64-

But if you have multiple versions of r2 installed you are probably installing them with different --prefix. So that shouldnt be a problem unless the plugins are installed in the home. Maybe the file can be renamed to r2ghidra.5.6.2.so but we will need to handle that situation.

[trufae]

@condret suggested to add a way to load plugins ignoring the version field