Building

Note

If you just want to use the latest Release version of Cutter, please note that we provide pre-compiled binaries for Windows, Linux and macOS on our release page.

Getting the Source

Make sure you’ve git installed in your system (Installation guide) and do the following:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/radareorg/cutter

This will clone the Cutter source and it’s dependencies(radare2, etc.) under cutter and you should see the following dir structure:

cutter/-|
        |-docs/     # Cutter Documentation
        |-radare2/  # radare2 submodule
        |-src/      # Cutter Source Code

Following sections assume that cutter is your working dir. (if not, do cd cutter)

Building on Linux

Requirements

On Linux, you will need:

  • build-essential

  • cmake

  • meson

  • libzip-dev

  • libzlib-dev

  • qt5

  • qt5-svg

  • pkgconf

  • curl*

  • python-setuptools*

  • KSyntaxHighlighter**

  • graphviz**

* Recommended while building with make/Cmake.

** Optional. If present, these add extra features to Cutter. See CMake Building Options.

On Debian-based Linux distributions, all of these essential packages can be installed with this single command:

sudo apt install build-essential cmake meson libzip-dev zlib1g-dev qt5-default libqt5svg5-dev qttools5-dev qttools5-dev-tools

Note

For Ubuntu 18.04 and lower, meson should be installed with pip install --upgrade --user meson.

On Arch-based Linux distributions:

sudo pacman -Syu --needed base-devel cmake meson qt5-base qt5-svg qt5-tools

Building Steps

The recommended way to build Cutter on Linux is by using CMake. Simply invoke CMake to build Cutter and its dependency radare2.

mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DCUTTER_USE_BUNDLED_RADARE2=ON ../src
cmake --build .

If your operating system has a newer version of CMake (> v3.12) you can use this cleaner solution:

cmake -S src -B build -DCUTTER_USE_BUNDLED_RADARE2=ON
cmake --build build

If you want to use Cutter with another version of radare2 you can omit -DCUTTER_USE_BUNDLED_RADARE2=ON. Note that using a version of radare2 which isn’t the version Cutter is using can cause issues and the compilation might fail.

Note

If you are interested in building Cutter with support for Python plugins, Syntax Highlighting, Crash Reporting and more, please look at the full list of CMake Building Options.

After the build process is complete, you should have the Cutter executable in the build dir. You can now execute Cutter like this:

./build/Cutter

Building on Windows

Requirements

Cutter works on Windows 7 or newer. To compile Cutter it is necessary to have the following installed:

  • A version of Visual Studio (2015, 2017 and 2019 are supported)

  • CMake

  • Qt

Building with Meson

There is another way to compile Cutter on Windows if the one above does not work or does not suit your needs.

Additional requirements:

  • Ninja build system

  • Meson build system

Download and unpack Ninja to the Cutter source root directory (ie. cutter - working dir).

Note that in the below steps, the paths may vary depending on your version of Qt and Visual Studio.

Environment settings (example for x64 version):

:: Export MSVC variables
CALL "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\VC\vcvarsall.bat" x64
:: Add qmake to PATH
SET "PATH=C:\Qt\5.10.1\msvc2015_64\bin;%PATH%"
:: Add Python to PATH
SET "PATH=C:\Program Files\Python36;%PATH%"

Install Meson:

python -m pip install meson

To compile Cutter, run:

CALL prepare_r2.bat
CALL build.bat

Building with Qmake

Using QtCreator

One standard way is to simply load the project inside QtCreator. To do so, open QtCreator and on the welcome screen click on “Open Project”, and finally select the cutter/src/Cutter.pro file. QtCreator will then allow you to directly edit the source code and build the project.

Note

On Windows, for the .pro file to be compiled successfully, it is required to run prepare_r2.bat beforehand.

Compiling on Linux / macOS

The easiest way, but not the one we recommend, is to simply run ./build.sh from the root directory, and let the magic happen. The script will use qmake to build Cutter. The build.sh script is meant to be deprecated and will be deleted in the future.

If you want to manually use qmake, follow these steps:

mkdir build; cd build
qmake ../src/Cutter.pro
make
cd ..

Additional Steps for macOS

On macOS you will also have to copy the launcher bash script:

mv Cutter.app/Contents/MacOS/Cutter Cutter.app/Contents/MacOS/Cutter.bin
cp ../src/macos/Cutter Cutter.app/Contents/MacOS/Cutter && chmod +x Cutter.app/Contents/MacOS/Cutter

CMake Building Options

Note that there are some major building options available:

  • CUTTER_USE_BUNDLED_RADARE2 automatically compile Radare2 from submodule.

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_PYTHON compile with Python support.

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_PYTHON_BINDINGS automatically generate Python Bindings with Shiboken2, required for Python plugins!

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_KSYNTAXHIGHLIGHTING use KSyntaxHighlighting for code highlighting.

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_GRAPHVIZ enable Graphviz for graph layouts.

  • CUTTER_EXTRA_PLUGIN_DIRS List of addition plugin locations. Useful when preparing package for Linux distros that have strict package layout rules.

Cutter binary release options, not needed for most users and might not work easily outside CI environment:

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTS is used to compile Cutter with crash handling system enabled (Breakpad).

  • CUTTER_ENABLE_DEPENDENCY_DOWNLOADS Enable downloading of dependencies. Setting to OFF doesn’t affect any downloads done by r2 build. This option is used for preparing Cutter binary release packges. Turned off by default.

  • CUTTER_PACKAGE_DEPENDENCIES During install step include the third party dependencies. This option is used for preparing Cutter binary release packges.

These options can be enabled or disabled from the command line arguments passed to CMake. For example, to build Cutter with support for Python plugins, you can run this command:

cmake -B build -DCUTTER_ENABLE_PYTHON=ON -DCUTTER_ENABLE_PYTHON_BINDINGS=ON

Or if one wants to explicitly disable an option:

cmake -B build -DCUTTER_ENABLE_PYTHON=OFF

Compiling Cutter with Breakpad Support

If you want to build Cutter with crash handling system, you will want to first prepare Breakpad. For this, simply run one of the scripts (according to your OS) from root Cutter directory:

source scripts/prepare_breakpad_linux.sh # Linux
source scripts/prepare_breakpad_macos.sh # MacOS
scripts/prepare_breakpad.bat # Windows

Then if you are building on Linux you want to change PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable so it contains $CUSTOM_BREAKPAD_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig. For this simply run

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$CUSTOM_BREAKPAD_PREFIX/lib/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"

Troubleshooting

  • Cmake can’t find Qt

    Cmake: qt development package not found

Depending on how Qt installed (Distribution packages or using the Qt installer application), CMake may not be able to find it by itself if it is not in a common place. If that is the case, double-check that the correct Qt version is installed. Locate its prefix (a directory containing bin/, lib/, include/, etc.) and specify it to CMake using CMAKE_PREFIX_PATH in the above process, e.g.:

rm CMakeCache.txt # the cache may be polluted with unwanted libraries found before
cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/opt/Qt/5.9.1/gcc_64 ..

  • Radare2’s libr_*.so cannot be found when running Cutter

    ./Cutter: error while loading shared libraries: libr_lang.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The exact r2 .so file that cannot be found may vary. On some systems, the linker by default uses RUNPATH instead of RPATH which is incompatible with the way r2 is currently compiled. It results in some of the r2 libraries not being found when running cutter. You can verify if this is the problem by running ldd ./Cutter. If all the r2 libraries are missing you have a different problem. The workaround is to either add the –disable-new-dtags linker flag when compiling Cutter or add the r2 installation path to LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable.

cmake -DCMAKE_EXE_LINKER_FLAGS="-Wl,--disable-new-dtags"  ..

  • r_*.h: No such file or directory

    r_util/r_annotated_code.h: No such file or directory

If you face an error where some header file starting with r_ is missing, you should check the radare2 submodule and make sure it is in sync with upstream Cutter repo. Simply run:

git submodule update --init --recursive

  • r_core development package not found

If you installed radare2 and still encounter this error, it could be that your PATH environment variable is set improperly (doesn’t contain /usr/local/bin). You can fix this by adding the radare2 installation dir to your PATH variable.

macOS specific solutions:

On macOS, that can also be, for example, due to Qt Creator.app being copied over to /Applications. To fix this, append :/usr/local/bin to the PATH variable within the Build Environment section in Qt Creator. See the screenshot below should you encounter any problems.

You can also try:

  • PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/bin/prefix/radare2/lib/pkgconfig qmake

  • PKG_CONFIG_PATH=$HOME/cutter/radare2/pkgcfg qmake (for a newer version and if the radare2 submodule is being built and used)

_images/cutter_path_settings.png

You can also install radare2 into /usr/lib/pkgconfig/ and then add a variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH with the value /usr/lib/pkgconfig/.

  • macOS libjpeg error

On macOS, Qt5 apps fail to build on QtCreator if you have the libjpeg installed with brew. Run this command to work around the issue:

sudo mv /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.dylib /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.dylib.not-found

  • LSOpenURLsWithRole() failed with error -10810

On macOS High Sierra Cutter crashes due to the absence of gettext library. To fix this problem, simply install the missing package:

brew install gettext