Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-programming (27 mails)

[Jerry Feldman <gaf@xxxxxxx>]

On 12/30/2009 02:45 PM, Per Jessen wrote:
> Petr Baudis wrote:
>
>   
> > On Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 07:01:28PM +0100, Per Jessen wrote:
> >     
> > > Which assembler do I pick for i386 and x86_64 ?
> > >       
> [snip]
>   
> > I'm not really familiar with yasm, lzasm or fasm, but I personally use
> > this rule of thumb:
> >
> > (i) If I have bunch of Intel-syntax assembler source I need to
> > compile, or I need to do something very raw, I use nasm.
> >
> > (ii) Otherwise, I use gas.
> >
> > I think these two projects are most likely to never fall out of
> > maintenance and continue gaining support for whatever new
> > architectures and instructions coming by (especially gas is virtually
> > guaranteed to stay alive as long as GNU/Linux does),
> >     
> Continued support and in particular development would be important for
> my decision too, yes.
>
>   
> > and they are usually installed on any Linux with a development
> > toolchain, so I wonder what compelling advantages the other assemblers
> > have. 
> >     
> I have not yet gathered sufficient experience with any of the others,
> only TASM (for the i386 platform), but because I might be rewriting
> many tens-of-thousands lines of code, productivity is important, i.e. I
> want an assembler that supports more than just the odd function written
> in assembler.  
>
>   
> > gas uses very different syntax from what the Intel assembly hackers
> > are used to, but it's worth learning it - you will gain access to
> > assembly of pretty much any architecture out there, you can use the
> > integrated assembly support in gcc, you can read gdb's disass output,
> > etc etc.
> >     
>   
Based on your comment about having to rewrite, I would recommend trying
to find an assembler that support the macros and syntax you already have.
I wouild probably also recommend gas because it is tightly bound to GCC.
Would it be possible to convert some of those modules to C. Most C
compilers support the ASM() directive. While there are certainly some
very good reasons to write in assembler, with today's chips the need is
much less. (Thankfully you don't have to convert it to IA64 assembler).



-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf@xxxxxxx>
Boston Linux and Unix
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