Recompilation Is Not Enough: Test-Guided Decompiled-C Repair
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Abstract (arXiv)
Decompiled C often becomes recompilable only after repair, but recompilation alone does not establish test-observed behavior. A recompiled command-line binary can still parse options incorrectly, print different bytes, or return a different exit status. We present a few-step workflow for repairing decompiled C using compiler feedback and related official tests. Compiler and linker diagnostics first guide build repair. Once the repaired C recompiles into a binary, smoke checks and related official tests expose behavioral discrepancies for semantic repair. In a preliminary static-enriched evaluation on 104 Coreutils 9.5 binaries with available decompiler exports and deterministic exact-output smoke comparisons, 91 binaries (87.5%) recompile and pass the test gate; 9 do not recompile within the repair budget, and 4 recompile but still fail the test gate. The result suggests that test-gate feedback can make LLM-assisted repair of decompiled C more auditable than compile-only recovery.
Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 6 of its 23 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 7 Sep 2026.
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References · 6
- 2024RepairAgent: An Autonomous, LLM-Based Agent for Program Repaircited by 225
- 2023Nova: Generative Language Models for Assembly Code with Hierarchical Attention and Contrastive Learningcited by 12
- 2024The Fact Selection Problem in LLM-Based Program Repaircited by 12
- 2025Decompile-Bench: Million-Scale Binary-Source Function Pairs for Real-World Binary Decompilationcited by 11
- 2025Fast, Fine-Grained Equivalence Checking for Neural Decompilerscited by 2
- 2026CODEFUSE-DEBENCH: An Empirical Study on Readability, Recompilability, and Functionalitycited by 1
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