A Ghidra extension that parses C/C++ headers using libclang and imports the extracted types into Ghidra's data type manager. Built on JDK 21+ Panama FFI — no JNA, no jextract, no third-party native dependencies.

• Parse C/C++ source and header files with a real compiler frontend (libclang)
• Import structs, unions, enums, typedefs, and function signatures
• Bit-field and __attribute__((packed)) support
• 24 target architectures (x86, ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC, RISC-V, M68K, AVR, LoongArch, S390, and more)
• Bundled statically-linked libclang for Linux, macOS, and Windows (x86_64 + ARM64) — no system LLVM required
• Save/load parse profiles (.prf), compatible with Ghidra's built-in C parser
• Commit types to the current program or export to a standalone .gdt archive

• Ghidra 12+
• JDK 21+ (JDK 22+ recommended — Panama FFI is preview in 21, stable in 22+)

The plugin uses Panama FFI upcalls (native-to-Java callbacks) for libclang's AST visitor pattern. On all tested JDK versions and vendors (Temurin 21, Red Hat OpenJDK 25), JIT-compiled code (both C1 and C2) crashes with SIGSEGV when running inside or after Panama upcall callbacks. The only reliable workaround is interpreter mode:

# Add to <ghidra_install>/support/launch.properties
VMARGS=-Xint

This disables JIT compilation entirely. Ghidra will be slower to start and during heavy operations, but normal usage is largely unaffected since the bottleneck during parsing is libclang, not Java.

If you can help diagnose or fix this, contributions are very welcome! The core issue is that any JIT-compiled method (even basic JDK classes like Matcher.reset() or UnixPath.initOffsets()) crashes with SIGSEGV (SI_TKILL) when executed on a thread that has active Panama upcall frames. Things worth investigating:

• Whether other JDK vendors/builds (Oracle JDK, Amazon Corretto, GraalVM) exhibit the same behavior
• Whether the upcall descriptor or callback signature can be restructured to avoid the issue
• Whether Ghidra's custom classloader (ghidra.GhidraClassLoader) interacts badly with Panama upcalls under JIT
• Upstream OpenJDK bug reports related to Panama upcalls and JIT compilation

1. Download a release ZIP (or build from source)
2. In Ghidra: File > Install Extensions... > click the + icon > select the ZIP
3. Restart Ghidra
4. Edit <ghidra_install>/support/launch.properties and add the following lines:

   VMARGS=-Xint

   If using JDK 21, also add:

   VMARGS=--enable-preview

5. Open a tool (e.g. CodeBrowser), go to File > Configure > click Configure under Ghidra Code > enable the GCPPPlugin (Clang C/C++ Parser) plugin

1. Open a program in the CodeBrowser
2. Go to File > Parse C/C++ Source (Clang Powered)...
3. Add source/header files and include paths
4. Configure parse options and select the target architecture
5. Click Parse to Program to import types directly, or Parse to File... to export to a .gdt archive

JDK 21 builds with --enable-preview (Panama FFI is preview). JDK 22+ builds without it (Panama is stable). The build auto-detects the JDK version.

./gradlew                     # build universal ZIP (all platforms)
./gradlew createDistribution_linux_x86_64   # platform-specific (smaller)

Output goes to dist/.

Platform-specific tasks: linux_x86_64, linux_arm_64, mac_x86_64, mac_arm_64, win_x86_64, win_arm_64.

Heavily inspired by GhidraClangTypes by @Adubbz — the original libclang-based type parser for Ghidra that got this idea rolling.

Apache License 2.0