MachOSwiftSection

A Swift library for parsing mach-o files to obtain Swift information. （Types/Protocol/ProtocolConformance info）

It may be the most powerful swift dump you can find so far, as it uses a custom Demangler to parse symbolic references and restore the original logic of the Swift Runtime as much as possible.

[!NOTE] This library is developed as an extension of MachOKit for Swift

Requirements

• Swift 6.2+
• Xcode 26.0+
• macOS 10.15+ / iOS 13+ / tvOS 13+ / watchOS 6+ / visionOS 1+

MachOSwiftSection Library

Roadmap

• Protocol Descriptors
• Protocol Conformance Descriptors
• Type Context Descriptors
• Associated Type Descriptors
• Method Symbol For Dyld Caches
• Builtin Type Descriptors
• Swift Interface Support
• Runtime Metadata Inspection (SwiftInspection)
• Type Member Layout (WIP, MachOImage only)
• Swift Section MCP

Swift Package Manager

Add the package to your Package.swift:

dependencies: [
    .package(url: "https://github.com/MxIris-Reverse-Engineering/MachOSwiftSection", from: "0.10.0"),
],
targets: [
    .target(
        name: "YourTarget",
        dependencies: [
            .product(name: "MachOSwiftSection", package: "MachOSwiftSection"),
            // Optional higher-level products:
            .product(name: "SwiftInspection", package: "MachOSwiftSection"),
            .product(name: "SwiftDump", package: "MachOSwiftSection"),
            .product(name: "SwiftInterface", package: "MachOSwiftSection"),
            .product(name: "TypeIndexing", package: "MachOSwiftSection"),
        ]
    ),
]

Product	Purpose
MachOSwiftSection	Low-level parsing of __swift5_* sections (raw descriptors).
SwiftInspection	Runtime metadata inspection — EnumLayoutCalculator (multi-payload enum layouts), ClassHierarchyDumper, MetadataReader.
SwiftDump	High-level type wrappers (Struct, Enum, Class, Protocol, ProtocolConformance, …).
SwiftInterface	End-to-end Swift interface generation.
TypeIndexing	Index types / extensions / conformances for cross-binary analysis.

Usage

Basic

Swift information from MachOImage or MachOFile can be retrieved via the swift property.

import MachOKit
import MachOSwiftSection

let machO //` MachOFile` or `MachOImage`

// Protocol Descriptors
let protocolDescriptors = try machO.swift.protocolDescriptors
for protocolDescriptor in protocolDescriptors {
    let protocolType = try Protocol(descriptor: protocolDescriptor, in: machO)
    // do somethings ...
}

// Protocol Conformance Descriptors
let protocolConformanceDescriptors = try machO.swift.protocolConformanceDescriptors
for protocolConformanceDescriptor in protocolConformanceDescriptors {
    let protocolConformance = try ProtocolConformance(descriptor: protocolConformanceDescriptor, in: machO)
    // do somethings ...
}

// Type/Nominal Descriptors
let typeContextDescriptors = try machO.swift.typesContextDescriptors
for typeContextDescriptor in typeContextDescriptors {
    switch typeContextDescriptor {
    case .type(let typeContextDescriptorWrapper):
        switch typeContextDescriptorWrapper {
        case .enum(let enumDescriptor):
            let enumType = try Enum(descriptor: enumDescriptor, in: machO)
            // do somethings ...
        case .struct(let structDescriptor):
            let structType = try Struct(descriptor: structDescriptor, in: machO)
            // do somethings ...
        case .class(let classDescriptor):
            let classType = try Class(descriptor: classDescriptor, in: machO)
            // do somethings ...
        }
    default:
        break
    }
}

Generate Complete Swift Interface

For generating complete Swift interface files, you can use the SwiftInterface library which provides a more comprehensive interface generation capability.

import MachOKit
import SwiftInterface

let builder = try SwiftInterfaceBuilder(configuration: .init(), eventHandlers: [], in: machO)
try await builder.prepare()
let result = try await builder.printRoot()

Generated interfaces reflect a wide range of Swift language features:

• Type / member attributes: @objc, @nonobjc, dynamic, @retroactive, @globalActor, @escaping, consuming / borrowing parameter modifiers
• distributed actor declarations and distributed func members
• deinit for classes and noncopyable types
• VTable offset comments alongside class members, ordered to match the on-disk layout
• Expanded field offsets for nested struct fields, rendered as a tree
• Inverted protocols (~Copyable, ~Escapable) on types and generic requirements

Inspect Runtime Metadata

SwiftInspection exposes higher-level inspection utilities built on top of MachOSwiftSection:

• EnumLayoutCalculator — compute the on-disk layout of Swift enums, including single-payload and multi-payload (tagged and untagged) cases. Mirrors the ABI rules in swift/ABI/Enum.h.
• ClassHierarchyDumper — walk a class's inheritance chain across Swift/ObjC boundaries (requires @_spi(Internals) import SwiftInspection, MachOImage only).
• MetadataReader — demangle types, symbols, context descriptors, and build generic signatures against a Mach-O.

swift-section CLI Tool

Installation

You can get the swift-section CLI tool in three ways:

• GitHub Releases: Download from GitHub releases
• Homebrew: Install via brew install swift-section
• Build from Source: Build with ./build-executable-product.sh (requires Xcode 26.0 / Swift 6.2+ toolchain)

Usage

The swift-section CLI tool provides two main subcommands: dump, and interface.

[!IMPORTANT] As of 0.10.0, when the input is a fat / universal binary you must pass --architecture <arch>. The tool no longer picks a default slice silently.

dump - Dump Swift Information

Dump Swift information from a Mach-O file or dyld shared cache.

swift-section dump [options] [file-path]

Basic usage:

# Dump all Swift information from a Mach-O file
swift-section dump /path/to/binary

# Dump only types and protocols
swift-section dump --sections types,protocols /path/to/binary

# Save output to file
swift-section dump --output-path output.txt /path/to/binary

# Use specific architecture (required for fat binaries)
swift-section dump --architecture arm64 /path/to/binary

Working with dyld shared cache:

# Dump from system dyld shared cache
swift-section dump --uses-system-dyld-shared-cache --cache-image-name SwiftUICore

# Dump from specific dyld shared cache
swift-section dump --dyld-shared-cache --cache-image-path /path/to/cache /path/to/dyld_shared_cache

Dump output includes richer annotations:

• Protocol witness table (PWT) entries are annotated with the requirement they satisfy
• Inverted protocol constraints (~Copyable, ~Escapable) are rendered on types and generic requirements
• Protocol conformances can include the PWT address

interface - Generate Swift Interface

Generate a complete Swift interface file from a Mach-O file, similar to Swift's generated interfaces.

swift-section interface [options] [file-path]

Basic usage:

# Generate Swift interface from a Mach-O file
swift-section interface /path/to/binary

# Save interface to file
swift-section interface --output-path interface.swiftinterface /path/to/binary

# Use specific architecture (required for fat binaries)
swift-section interface --architecture arm64 /path/to/binary

Working with dyld shared cache:

# Dump from system dyld shared cache
swift-section interface --uses-system-dyld-shared-cache --cache-image-name SwiftUICore

# Dump from specific dyld shared cache
swift-section interface --dyld-shared-cache --cache-image-path /path/to/cache /path/to/dyld_shared_cache

Running Tests

The snapshot tests in this repository rely on a fixture framework (SymbolTestsCore) built from an Xcode project in Tests/Projects/SymbolTests/. The framework binary is not checked in — rebuild it once after cloning:

./Scripts/build-test-fixtures.sh

Then run the tests:

swift package update
swift test

Skipping the fixture build causes MachOFileTests to throw a "file not found" error at Tests/Projects/SymbolTests/DerivedData/.../SymbolTestsCore during test init(), before any assertions run.

To regenerate snapshots after a legitimate Swift-compiler / metadata change:

SNAPSHOT_TESTING_RECORD=all swift test \
    --filter SymbolTestsCoreDumpSnapshotTests \
    --filter SymbolTestsCoreInterfaceSnapshotTests

Commit the updated __Snapshots__/ files alongside the source change that prompted the regeneration.

License

MachOObjCSection

MachOKit

CwlDemangle

MachOSwiftSection is released under the MIT License. See LICENSE