Binary Descriptors

Binary Descriptors are constant data objects storing information about the binary executable. Unlike “regular” constants, binary descriptors are linked to a known offset in the binary, making them accessible to other programs, such as a different image running on the same device or a host tool. A few examples of constants that would make useful binary descriptors are: kernel version, app version, build time, compiler version, environment variables, compiling host name, etc.

Binary descriptors are created by using the DEFINE_BINDESC_* macros. For example:

#include <zephyr/bindesc.h>

BINDESC_STR_DEFINE(my_string, 2, "Hello world!"); // Unique ID is 2

my_string could then be accessed using:

printk("my_string: %s\n", BINDESC_GET_STR(my_string));

But it could also be retrieved by west bindesc:

$ west bindesc custom_search STR 2 build/zephyr/zephyr.bin
"Hello world!"

Internals

Binary descriptors are implemented with a TLV (tag, length, value) header linked to a known offset in the binary image. This offset may vary between architectures, but generally the descriptors are linked as close to the beginning of the image as possible. In architectures where the image must begin with a vector table (such as ARM), the descriptors are linked right after the vector table. The reset vector points to the beginning of the text section, which is after the descriptors. In architectures where the image must begin with executable code (e.g. x86), a jump instruction is injected at the beginning of the image, in order to skip over the binary descriptors, which are right after the jump instruction.

Each tag is a 16 bit unsigned integer, where the most significant nibble (4 bits) is the type (currently uint, string or bytes), and the rest is the ID. The ID is globally unique to each descriptor. For example, the ID of the app version string is 0x800, and a string is denoted by 0x1, making the app version tag 0x1800. The length is a 16 bit number equal to the length of the data in bytes. The data is the actual descriptor value. All binary descriptor numbers (magic, tags, uints) are laid out in memory in the endianness native to the SoC. west bindesc assumes little endian by default, so if the image belongs to a big endian SoC, the appropriate flag should be given to the tool.

The binary descriptor header starts with the magic number 0xb9863e5a7ea46046. It’s followed by the TLVs, and ends with the DESCRIPTORS_END (0xffff) tag. The tags are always aligned to 32 bits. If the value of the previous descriptor had a non-aligned length, zero padding will be added to ensure that the current tag is aligned.

Putting it all together, here is what the example above would look like in memory (of a little endian SoC):

 46 60 a4 7e 5a 3e 86 b9 02 10  0d 00  48 65 6c 6c 6f 20 77 6f 72 6c 64 21 00 00 00 00 ff ff
|         magic         | tag |length| H  e  l  l  o     w  o  r  l  d  !    |   pad  | end |

Usage

Binary descriptors are always created by the BINDESC_*_DEFINE macros. As shown in the example above, a descriptor can be generated from any string or integer, with any ID. However, it is recommended to comply with the standard tags defined in include/zephyr/bindesc.h, as that would have the following benefits:

  1. The west bindesc tool would be able to recognize what the descriptor means and print a meaningful tag

  2. It would enforce consistency between various apps from various sources

  3. It allows upstream-ability of descriptor generation (see Standard Descriptors)

To define a descriptor with a standard tag, just use the tags included from bindesc.h:

#include <zephyr/bindesc.h>

BINDESC_STR_DEFINE(app_version, BINDESC_ID_APP_VERSION_STRING, "1.2.3");

Standard Descriptors

Some descriptors might be trivial to implement, and could therefore be implemented in a standard way in upstream Zephyr. These could then be enabled via Kconfig, instead of requiring every user to reimplement them. These include build times, kernel version, and host info. For example, to add the build date and time as a string, the following configs should be enabled:

# Enable binary descriptors
CONFIG_BINDESC=y

# Enable definition of binary descriptors
CONFIG_BINDESC_DEFINE=y

# Enable default build time binary descriptors
CONFIG_BINDESC_DEFINE_BUILD_TIME=y
CONFIG_BINDESC_BUILD_DATE_TIME_STRING=y

To avoid collisions with user defined descriptors, the standard descriptors were allotted the range between 0x800-0xfff. This leaves 0x000-0x7ff to users. For more information read the help sections of these Kconfig symbols. By convention, each Kconfig symbol corresponds to a binary descriptor whose name is the Kconfig name (with CONFIG_BINDESC_ removed) in lower case. For example, CONFIG_BINDESC_KERNEL_VERSION_STRING creates a descriptor that can be accessed using BINDESC_GET_STR(kernel_version_string).

west bindesc tool

west is able to parse and display binary descriptors from a given executable image.

For more information refer to west bindesc --help or the documentation.

API Reference

Bindesc Define

Related code samples