amitools - various AmigaOS tools for other platforms

• written by Christian Vogelgsang chris@vogelgsang.org
• 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 >= 3.9
• pip3

Optional Packages

• lhafile - FS Edition: required to use .lha file scanner
• machine68k: required to run vamos

Installation

Stable/Release Version

If you only need the tools without vamos then you can install the pure Python version:

pip3 install amitools

If you want to run vamos then you need the CPU emulator from the machine68k package and you can install this dependency with:

pip3 install 'amitools[vamos]'

Note:

• on Linux/macOS may use sudo to install for all users
• the version may be a bit outdated. If you need recent changes use the current version.

Current Version from GitHub

If you wan to run vamos then first install the CPU emulator machine68k:

pip3 install -U git+https://github.com/cnvogelg/machine68k.git

Then install amitools directly from the git repository:

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

Note:

• 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.
• Repeat this command to update to the latest version.

Developers

• Follow this route if you want to hack around with the amitools codebase
• Clone the Git repo: amitools@git
• Ensure you have Cython and machine68k installed:

pip3 install cython machine68k

• Enter the directory of the cloned repo and install via pip:

pip3 install -U -e .

This install amitools in your current Python environment but takes the source files still from this repository. So you can change the code there and directly test the tools.

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.

  Note: vamos requires the package machine68k installed first!

• 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