Oninit® BLT — printers (mode policy)

BLT has three extraction modes. The choice is the operator’s: use Strict when symbols are mandatory and a clean abort is preferable; use Recovery when partial output is more useful than no output at all.

Preparing a stripped fixture

$ strip --strip-all -o Printers_stripped.4ge examples/Printers.4ge
$ file Printers_stripped.4ge
Printers_stripped.4ge: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, dynamically linked, stripped

Note that an Informix4GL binary still exports its 4GL function names through the dynamic symbol table even after a strip, so the function names main_code, add_det, … survive the operation. BLT’s "stripped" detection keys on the static symbol table being absent, not on a virtual-address heuristic, so a Strict / Recovery decision lands correctly on Informix4GL output.

Strict — the abort path

mode: strict
inputs:
  binary:
    paths: [Printers_stripped.4ge]
  schema_ddl:
    paths: [examples/printers.sql]
output:
  directory: ./report/

Under Strict, BLT refuses to proceed on a stripped binary. The pipeline aborts before any findings are written; no spec is emitted; the operator gets a clear reason on stderr.

Recovery — warn and continue

mode: recovery
inputs:
  binary:
    paths: [Printers_stripped.4ge]
  schema_ddl:
    paths: [examples/printers.sql]
output:
  directory: ./report/

The same input under Recovery runs to completion. A binary diagnostic is recorded and surfaced in review.md under a dedicated "Binary diagnostics" section, so any reviewer sees the run was on a stripped input and can weigh the rest of the output accordingly. The diagnostic is the audit trail.

Trade-off

Strict is the right choice when the operator wants a deterministic fail-fast: the absence of symbols is a hard precondition violation. Recovery is the right choice when partial output is more useful than no output at all — for instance, a stripped binary with an intact dynamic symbol table still yields useful symbol and string evidence. The diagnostic preserves the audit story regardless.