Welcome to the sixth beta of IDA 7.0!

Extra downloads:

 * SDK
 * FLAIR
 * TIL utils
 * full changelist

Known issues in beta6 (as of 2017-09-01)
1. Objective-C metadata parsing of some modules in iOS11 ARM64 shared cache may fail.

Here's a summary of major changes and some rough guidelines for testing:

The main development happened in the x64 build.
All native plugins/modules/loaders built for x86 won't work with it and will have to be ported (assuming you have the source code).
Old binary-only plugins *may* work in the x86 build which is ABI-compatible with 6.95.
See the SDK package for the new API and porting guidelines.
For Python, we have tried to provide a compatibility layer which will hopefully ease the pain but it has not been throroughly tested.
Please try it and let us know if you run into issues.

*NEW in beta6*
 This beta will expire in a couple of weeks. Make sure to have your support renewed if you plan to use 7.0 release and
be prepared to switch to another version if necessary.

*NEW in beta5*
  https://www.hex-rays.com/reqbeta.shtml can be used to request x64 and/or x86 build of IDA.

*NEW in beta4*
- beta4 includes an x86 build forked off the 6.95 tree
- it includes *some*, but not all, fixes of the x64 build.
- we may backport additional fixes on case-by-case basis, but it is intended to be used for compatibility purposes only.
- it is binary-compatible with plugins compiled for 6.95 (and earlier) IDA versions.
- it can open 7.0 IDBs created in the x64 build but might not support all the new features completely (e.g. non-ASCII strings).

When reporting bugs present in the x86 build, mention that explicitly.

The 7.0 SDK only supports x64 build of IDA.
SDK 6.95 can be used to develop plugins for IDA 7.0-x86


- Naming of IDA binaries has been unified across all OS variants.
The IDA GUI binary has been renamed from idaq to just "ida[.exe]". The text-mode UI is named idat[.exe]
(previously idaw.exe on Windows and idal on Linux/OS X).
The IDA kernel: ida[64].wll -> ida[64].dll (Windows)
Plugins, loaders and processor modules now use the standard OS-specific suffix
(.dll, .so or .dylib) instead of a custom extension.
They are still placed into separate subdirectories of the IDA install tree.

There are still two variants of IDA: one supporting 32-bit (ea_t is 32-bit)
and the other 64-bit address space(ea_t is 64-bit). IDA database
extensions remain correspondingly .idb and .i64.
We have considered making a single binary capable of handling both database variants
but it seems infeasible for the time being.

-Database binary format is still the same but things have been revamped inside.
For example, most strings are now assumed to be in UTF-8 which may lead to problems if you used any non-ASCII text in comments.
**Make backups of your old databases** and do let us know if you see any issues when upgrading.
If you have pre-6.95 databases, please also try upgrading them directly in IDA 7 and report back.


-Areas to test

 new code:
 1. EH, RTTI and Objective-C parsing.
 2. strings handling (both autoanalysis and UI).
 regressions:
 1. revamped loaders: ELF, MACH-O, PE
 2. UI: choosers (list views)
 3. if you have reported a bug and it is mentioned as fixed, please check that it has been and report if it's still there.
All bugfixes sent to individual users are supposed to be integrated into the source tree
but there's a possibility that we may have missed some.
 4. x64 compatibility issues, especially on Linux.


- Rewards for the best testers
To stimulate better reporting, we again plan to reward our most active testers with free support period extensions.
We won't publish exact criterias to prevent gaming the system (they are mostly subjective anyway), but here's some hints:
1) quality is better than quantity; we prefer a few high-impact bugs with detailed reproduction instructions
over a dozen of short reports about minor issues accompanied by words "doesn't work"
2) please send a single email per issue/bug so we can better divide the work and track progress