Set up Ghidra for REA

Unofficial guide. This site is an independent community guide and is not affiliated with the REA project. For authoritative docs see the official REA website and the morluto/rea GitHub repository. Commands here are taken from the official README/docs (checked 2026-10-13); REA changes quickly, so verify against the official docs.

Ghidra is the free way to give REA deep native-binary analysis. REA connects to an existing install; it never installs Ghidra or Java.

Requirements

• Ghidra 12.1.x (bridge verified with 12.1.4)
• A 64-bit full JDK in Ghidra's declared range — JDK 21+ for current 12.1
• The native decompiler for your platform under Ghidra/Features/Decompiler/os/<platform>/ (Linux ARM64 may need to build it separately)
• Linux x64/arm64, macOS x64/arm64, or experimental Windows x64

Configure (Linux / macOS)

export GHIDRA_INSTALL_DIR=/absolute/path/to/ghidra_12.1.4_PUBLIC
export JAVA_HOME=/absolute/path/to/jdk-21 # optional if java/javac are on PATH
rea doctor --json
rea setup

Windows: see Install REA on Windows.

Check and use

rea doctor --provider ghidra --json
rea analyze /absolute/path/to/program --provider ghidra --json
rea decompile /absolute/path/to/program 0x1000 --provider ghidra --json

Memory

REA uses GHIDRA_HEADLESS_MAXMEM, then GHIDRA_MAXMEM, else 2G as the JVM heap. For small targets on a small machine: export GHIDRA_HEADLESS_MAXMEM=512M. Your MCP client must pass this to the REA server process.

"native_decompiler missing" on macOS

If rea doctor --json reports native_decompiler missing on macOS x64, the docs note the extracted archive may contain decompiler source without the built binary for your platform.

Wrong CPU / compiler detected

export REA_GHIDRA_LANGUAGE_ID="x86:LE:32:default"
export REA_GHIDRA_COMPILER_SPEC_ID="borlandcpp"   # optional; requires a language

Related guides

• Fix Ghidra timeouts in REA
• REA vs Ghidra vs IDA
• REA CLI command cheat sheet

Sources: installation.md#ghidra · ghidra-provider.md

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