So vivisect recently went from python2 to python3. Luckily, most APIs have stayed relatively the same. There are a couple APIs (such as read/write memory) where the inputs/outputs have changed, but for the most part, the APIs have very similar structure to what they had before. Beyond that though, perhaps the biggest hurdle for upgrading from python2 to python3 are any pre-existing workspaces.
Workspaces saved via the basicfile format won't migrate cleanly. Basicfile is backed
by python's pickle, so having it work across python2 and python3 is...tricky. Not
impossible, but in order to maintain backwards compatibility, while still providing
an upgrade path, there's another storage module (vivisect.storage.mpfile) that is
msgpack based which, and works across python versions. To further help with migration,
there's the vivisect.storage.tools.convert module that can convert from one storage
format to the other. The conversion module exists in both the latest python2 release
(0.2.1) as well as the upcoming 1.0.1 release, in case another major need of it arises.
But to convert a single workspace from basicfile to mpfile:
python2 -m vivisect.storage.tools.convert <basicfile_workspace>
Which will then produce a <workspace>.mpviv file that should be loadable in python2 and python3.
The opposite also works, so you can run:
python2 -m vivisect.storage.tools.convert <mpfile_workspace>
To produce a basicfile-based workspace.
Please note that since we don't want to accidentally overwrite any files, the .viv
or .mpviv extensions that the conversion tool do not replace any other extensions,
so if you run the conversion tool on foo.viv, you'll end up with foo.viv.mpviv.
If this is not the behavior you want, you can supply the --name parameter to the tool
to specify the name for the new workspace like so:
python2 -m vivisect.storage.tools.convert <workspace> --name <my_new_worksapce_name>