Re: LibrePlanet 2022

[Jose E. Marchesi]

> On 2021-12-17 at 00:18 +0330, Mohammad-Reza Nabipoor wrote:
>
>>   Embedding GNU poke inside your application
>>   poke All The Things
>>   Examples of using libpoke in applications
>
> I like “poke All The Things”.  Maybe having “binaries” in the title
> could be useful.

I like this one:

"The Trojan poke: embedding GNU poke in your own program"

>> GNU poke is about manipulating structured binary data.
>> It has two parts: a library and a cli program (the editor).
>> Other programs can use the decoding/encoding capability of
>> GNU poke through `libpoke` library.
>> This talk will presents some examples of such integrations
>> both in popular programs like `gdb` and `gas`, and also in
>> some small ones.

I would structure the abstract as follows:

- First, what is GNU poke.  You already have that.

- Then, the fact that poke is not a monolithic program: most of the
  functionality, in particular the Poke compiler and the IO handling, is
  not in the `poke' application, but in a shared library called
  `libpoke'.

- This shared library provides mechanisms that allow other programs to
  integrate poke's capabilities in their own spheres and concepts.  This
  support is not gratuitous: poking at structured binary data is a
  rather general activity that is useful in a very wide range of
  different contexts.  Consider for example the memory of running
  processes in a system.  We could of course teach the `poke'
  application how to attach to processes and access their memory (in
  fact, it is supported in a very simple way) but things soon become
  complicated: what if I need to run the program up to certain point,
  then poke the contents of memory, then continue?  In practice we need
  a debugger.  So instead of turning poke into a debugger, a filesystem
  editor and partitioner, an assembler, and what not, we assimilate
  libpoke in these programs; if the program will not come to poke, poke
  will go to the program.

- This talk will describe the part of the libpoke API that provides the
  integration mechanism.  Then will show in detail a couple of examples
  of this kind of integration: poke in GDB and GAS, the GNU Debugger and
  the GNU assembler.

"Resistance is futile."