Interesting research software: Microsoft Detours

Sometimes, you just run into interesting piece of software. Today's pick is Microsoft Research's Detours, available for free for academic work, and also in commercial form.

Detours is a product for monitoring Windows API function calls for both the 32-bit and 64-bit worlds. In addition to the regular x86 and x64 Intel worlds, it also supports the ARM processors (think Windows CE and its many incarnations) and even the IA64 world, which however is probably in the future becoming extinct.

Here's what Microsoft itself says about the product:

"Innovative systems research hinges on the ability to easily instrument and extend existing operating system and application functionality. With access to appropriate source code, it is often trivial to insert new instrumentation or extensions by rebuilding the OS or application. However, in today's world systems researchers seldom have access to all relevant source code."

The cost for the latest commercial 3.0 version is a mere $9999 from Microsoft Store.