Hi everyone, I’m curious about the potential for reverse engineering or accessing the source code of shader files that have the .CSO extension. Has someone done something like this before or is it possible at all? Any insights on tools or approaches that could be effective in seeing the source of these files would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for your time!
It is the same problem as trying to get C++ back out of raw disassembled binaries.
With patience you can probably do it. There are some disassemblers that can let you interpret the bytecode with more human-friendly instruction names. With a bit of effort you could probably take the compiled shader object bytecode and turn the disassembly back into something approaching HLSL in structure, but without the names beyond the parameter name mapping.
Most of the time when people ask about it, it's legally, morally, or academically questionable like trying to open stuff they don't have rights to, but sometimes there are useful legitimate reasons to do it. It is far easier to just start with the original source than to disassemble and then attempt to de-compile the compiled binaries.
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