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Title=History of A68k
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Note: This section has been added to the documentation by the TIGCC Team. It was in history.txt before.
Version 2.71.F3y (Patrick Pelissier, June 27, 2009)
- Improved: the maximum length of a line has been raised from 256 to 65536.
- Bugfix: don't compile A68k statically, as it fails on multiple platforms in their
out of the box configuration (Lionel Debroux).
Version 2.71.F3x (Manoel Trapier, December 23, 2008)
- Added: OS X Makefile that generate an Universal Binary version.
Version 2.71.F3w (Kevin Kofler, July 27, 2006)
- Bugfix: Fixed compilation on *BSD and recent versions of OS X.
Version 2.71.F3v (Kevin Kofler, July 31, 2005)
- Bugfix: Don't crash on EQUs doing arithmetic with other EQUs which do
arithmetic with undefined symbols, print an error instead.
Version 2.71.F3u (Kevin Kofler, February 2, 2005)
- Bugfix: Fixed compilation with GCC 3.4.
Version 2.71.F3t (Kevin Kofler, January 31, 2005)
- Added: NO_UNOPTIMIZABLE_RELOCS compile-time define (disabled by default)
to allow generating AmigaOS-compatible object files again.
- Improved: Branches explicitly coded as .w are now marked unoptimizable.
- Improved: Label references explicitly coded as .l are now marked
unoptimizable.
- Bugfix: Emitting relocations for undefined symbols which are already in
the symbol table due to the forward branch optimization code now
works properly.
Version 2.71.F3s (Kevin Kofler, September 21, 2004)
- Added: Support for the "unoptimizable reloc" flag, keeping the linker
from corrupting some instructions when optimizing.
- Improved: All platforms now use the same maximum line length and chunk
sizes.
- Improved: The line count limit has been raised from 32767 to INT_MAX.
Version 2.71.F3r (Kevin Kofler, July 19, 2004)
- Bugfix: Fixed label(PC,Rn) addressing when "label" was in a different
section (again) (reported by Julien Moutinho).
Version 2.71.F3q (Kevin Kofler, December 30, 2003)
- Bugfix: Fixed label1-label2(an) in all-relocs mode (reported by
hwti).
- Added: (In all-relocs mode,) don't emit an address difference when the 2
labels are actually at the same address (or simply the same). This allows to
keep optimizing label1-label1(an) into (an).
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug when range-checking branches in all-relocs mode
(reported by hwti).
- Bugfix: Fixed a bug when range-checking short branches in all-relocs mode or
to a different section (reported by hwti).
Version 2.71.F3p (Kevin Kofler, December 1, 2003)
- Bugfix: Fixed label(PC,Rn) addressing in all-relocs mode or when "label" was
in a different section (reported by Matthieu Gallet).
Version 2.71.F3o (Kevin Kofler, October 5, 2003)
- Bugfix: Range checking now works correctly in all-relocs mode. (No more
spurious out-of-range errors.)
Version 2.71.F3n (Kevin Kofler, September 28, 2003)
- Bugfix: Local labels now work in all-relocs mode.
Version 2.71.F3m (Kevin Kofler, September 2, 2003)
- Bugfix: PC-relative or indexed references to other sections didn't work.
- Bugfix: x(PC,Dn) or x(PC,An) didn't work in all-relocs mode.
Version 2.71.F3l (Kevin Kofler, July 15, 2003)
- Added: The -u switch now also allows unaligned code, which can be useful
when the code will be copied somewhere else anyway.
- Added: Short branches across hunks or object files are now allowed.
- Added: -a (All relocs) switch, which tells A68k to emit all relocs, even
PC-relative relocs within a section. It also emits address
differences in a special TIGCC-specific format. This will allow
more aggressive linker-side optimization.
Version 2.71.F3k (Kevin Kofler, May 17, 2003)
- Bugfix: Increased the forward reference buffer in order to allow
multiple labels at the same location, as used in PedroM.
- Added: -u (Unaligned) switch, which disables automatic alignment of
DC.W, DC.L, DCB.W, DCB.L, DS.W and DS.L.
Version 2.71.F3i (Kevin Kofler, February 1, 2002)
- Bugfix: Local labels caused a "Pass 1 / Pass 2 phase error"
when preceded by an include file which
contained labels, but was skipped in pass 2 (such as OS.h).
Version 2.71.F3h (Kevin Kofler, January 23, 2002)
- Bugfix: The TITLE (or TTL) directive did not work at all.
It now works as it is supposed to.
- Bugfix: No longer crashes when trying to generate a
listing file with cross-references (using the -x
switch).
Version 2.71.F3g (Kevin Kofler, January 22, 2002)
- Bugfix: The RORG and PUBLIC directives are now recognized
correctly even if the first letter is not
capitalized. Thanks to Brandon Sterner for
reporting the problem with the RORG directive.
Version 2.71.F3f (Kevin Kofler, January 8, 2002)
- Now also accepts ";", and for the -v switch also "=", as
separator in command line arguments (wherever "," is
allowed), for compatibility with the "-WA," switch in
tigcc
.
Version 2.71.F3e (Kevin Kofler, August 3, 2001)
- Bugfix: The SUB->LEA optimisation did not change the
sign of the immediate value.
Version 2.71.F3d (Kevin Kofler, July 28, 2001)
- Bugfix: The ADD(A)/SUB(A)->LEA and LEA->ADDQ/SUBQ
optimizations caused "Pass 1 / Pass 2 phase
errors" if an optimization was known to be
possible only in pass 2 (i.e. if using forward
references to labels in the instruction). A68k
will not try to optimize those anymore. Maybe a
future version will provide support for this kind
of optimization, but it is very difficult to
implement.
- Bugfix: A68k did not compile correctly on Visual C++
because I had done a define in an incorrect way.
Version 2.71.F3c (Kevin Kofler, July 20, 2001)
- Applied a few patches submitted by Paul Froissart:
- A few more adaptations for compiling with Microsoft
Visual C++. (Note that I still recommend using GCC for
Mingw32.)
- A new command line switch:
- -v
- Allows to set a variable in the command line (like
-d with GCC). The variable will be a SET, not EQU
variable. Syntax: "-v<name>[,<value>]" (without
spaces, and without the quotes). Note that <value>
can only be a NUMBER at the moment. (We might
support symbols as values in a future version.)
The default value of <value> is 1.
- Improved the optimization:
- made optional the optimization which changes MOVEM
with a single register to MOVE
- added an optional optimization which changes ADD(A)
and SUB(A) to LEA when applicable
- added an optional optimization which changes LEA to
ADDQ or SUBQ when applicable
- added a command line switch which allows you to
selectively disable some optimizations:
- -r
- Allows to disable specific optimizations:
-rm | Disable the MOVEM -> MOVE optimization |
-ra | Disable the ADD(A)/SUB(A) -> LEA optimization |
-rl | Disable the LEA -> ADDQ/SUBQ optimization |
You may use more than one -r switch (as in
"-rm -ra") or combine them into a single switch
(as in "-rma").
You can still use -n to disable ALL optimizations
(even those not covered by -r).
- Added 2 more synonyms:
- The END directive is now optional. If you do not use
it, the assembly will automatically end at the end of
your source file.
- Also fixed a bug found by Paul Froissart involving the
reporting of invalid flags with the SECTION directive.
(Not that anyone would use those flags anyway.)
- Adapted and applied a very old patch by John Antonishek,
which allows you to define a symbol as XDEF even if it
has been declared as XREF before. This is especially
useful when using a common include file for globals.
- Moreover, END is not allowed in macros or include files
anymore since that was causing a few bugs because A68k
simply did not expect anyone to use it there. The
quickest remedy is to simply remove the END instruction,
since it is now optional anyway.
Version 2.71.F3b (Kevin Kofler, July 12, 2001)
- Bugfix: Now raises an error if an undefined local label is
used.
- Bugfix: Branches coded with an explicit length (.W or .L)
are not optimized (or flagged as optimizable)
anymore.
(In previous versions, .B or .S was not optimized,
but .W or .L could be optimized to a short branch.
Now, only branches without an explicit length will
be optimized.)
- Bugfix: Quoted strings can now be passed as macro
arguments without the need for '<' and '>', even
if they contain spaces or separators (',' or ';').
You can still use '<' and '>', for example in
order to pass strings like <129,' version'> (which
will appear as "ß version" on a TI-89/92/92+).
Version 2.71.F3a (Kevin Kofler, July 9, 2001)
- Win32 port for the TIGCC project, compiled with GCC for
Mingw32.
Even though we recommend Mingw32, A68k should also compile
with Microsoft Visual C++, thanks to Paul Froissart.
(Please do NOT ask me questions about compiling with
Visual C++. I have just put in Paul Froissart's ifdefs.)
It also compiles with Cygwin, but since the result is
larger than the Mingw32 version, I do not see any benefit
in using it.
- Bugfix: My Win32 port of v.2.71.F3 did not support labels
or variable names which contain accented
characters.
- Bugfix: Now detects all errors in include files. All
include files will be treated in pass 2 if an
error is detected.
- Bugfix by Paul Froissart: fixed a random crash bug due to
a missing initialization
- Bugfix by Julien Muchembled: allow odd displacements for
words and longwords if the
resulting address might be
even
- The Win32 version is now less greedy with the memory, so
its limitations are less annoying:
- lines can now be 256 bytes long (Paul Froissart)
- filenames (with path) can now be 259 bytes long (the
Win32 maximum)
- the default heap sizes have also been increased (Paul
Froissart)
- Added the following synonyms:
- BLO = BCS
- BHS = BCC
- DBLO = DBCS
- DBHS = DBCC
- ROLX = ROXL
- RORX = ROXR
Version 2.71.F3 (David Ellsworth, July 11, 2000)
- Fixed a bug introduced by my modifications that prevented
branches from being optimized in Global XRef mode.
Version 2.71.F2 (David Ellsworth, January 22, 1998)
- Made A68k properly differentiate between PC-relative and
absolute references to external symbols. Allowed branches
to reference external labels in Global XRef (-g parameter)
mode.
Version 2.71.F1 (David Ellsworth, January 7, 1998)
- Made changes so that combinations of EQU, XREF, and XDEF
directives work better together. These changes were made in
order for Fargo II library linking to be easier to do.
- The F1 stands for Fargo patchlevel 1.
Version 2.71 (Charlie Gibbs, April 16, 1991)
The following bugs in version 2.62 have been corrected:
- Enforcer checks were being generated if command-line
parameters that took a numeric value had no value or
the value was invalid. CalcValue was attempting to
look up a label in the symbol table, which having not
been allocated yet was causing a null pointer to be
dereferenced. (Patrick Quaid)
The following enhancements have been added:
- Function prototyping has been added. All function
prototypes are in a new include file, protos.h, which
is included by A68kdef.h. Prototyping can be disabled
(for compilers which do not support it) by defining
the symbol __NOPROTO; in this case old-style function
declarations are generated instead.
Version 2.70 (Charlie Gibbs, February 25, 1991)
The following bugs in version 2.62 have been corrected:
- The definition of tempstr in WriteSymTab (24 bytes)
was being overrun in some cases, causing A68k to hang.
Its length has been increased to MAXLINE.
(Paul Gittings, John Antonishek)
- If A7 was in a list of registers in the source operand
of a MOVEM instruction, all registers would be moved
(i.e. the mask was set to 0xFFFF). (Risto Kaivola)
- Octal or binary values that set bit 31 were being
flagged as overflow errors. (Harvey Taylor)
- ORGs were unnecessarily restricted when the -s flag was
specified. Everything should be absolute when S-records
are generated, and any absolute ORG should be allowed.
The following enhancements have been added:
- A new INCBIN directive has been added. It takes a
single operand, a file name whose contents are
included as is at the current position in the
object code file. (Julian Gold, Colin Fox)
- The opcode TTL is now accepted as a synonym for TITLE.
- The file mode in the creat() call in xopen() has been
changed from 1 to 0644; this provides a reasonable file
mode when compiled on a Unix system. (Paul Gittings)
- A new command-line keyword (-g) has been added. It
causes all undefined symbols to be treated as XREF.
(Paul Gittings, Steve Hawtin (who provided the code))
- All initialized fields in opcodes.c have been made global
for compatibilty with more compilers. (Steve Hawtin)
- The register list in a MOVEM instruction can now be an
immediate operand which specifies the actual mask bits.
(Paul Gittings, who provided the code)
- The default value for the -q option has been changed
from 10 to 100.
Version 2.62 (Charlie Gibbs, March 19, 1990)
The following enhancements have been added:
- A new command-line keyword (-m) has been added.
It must be immediately followed by a number which
specifies the offset from the beginning of a small
data section to the base register specified in the
NEAR directive (defaulting to A4). If this parameter
is omitted, the offset defaults to 32768 bytes. This
parameter is meaningful only if the NEAR directive
is used. (Colin Fox)
Version 2.61 (Charlie Gibbs, January 11, 1990)
The following bugs in version 2.6 have been corrected:
- ORG and RORG at the beginning of the program were
being processed incorrectly. (Jukka Jarvinen)
- A branch instruction to its own label, e.g.
lab bra lab
would cause phase errors; the instruction was
being shortened on pass 2 but not on pass 1.
(Kevin Hoare)
The following enhancements have been added:
- Labels may begin with '@' if the next character
is not numeric (to avoid confusion with octal
constants). (Colin Fox)
- Write errors now cause A68k to terminate gracefully
with an appropriate error message.
Version 2.6 (Charlie Gibbs, November 2, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.5 have been corrected:
The following enhancements have been added:
- Single-byte immediate operands (e.g. MOVE.B #-1,(a0))
are now padded with a high-order byte of zero, rather
than being sign-extended. (E. Lenz)
- The message "Error in operand format." has been changed
to "Addressing mode not allowed here." in places where
the latter message is more appropriate.
- If the -q option species a value of zero (or no value
is given, defaulting to zero), all console output will
be suppressed except for error messages, if any.
(Matt Dillon)
- The 128-byte restriction on constant length no longer
applies to the entire code generated by a single DCB
statement; statements such as
DCB.L 64,0
can now be handled. (Colin Fox)
- Forward branches are now optimized. The occasional
instruction may be missed due to ripple effects, but
this shouldn't happen frequently. The -f switch
will flag any such instructions.
- The -d switch can now be followed by an optional
prefix string (with or without a leading !) which
specifies which symbols should or should not be
included in the symbol table dump. (Lionel Hummel)
Version 2.5 (Charlie Gibbs, June 18, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.42 have been corrected:
- Upon normal termination, A68k occasionally crashed in
quit_cleanup by trying to free the relocation table twice.
(Jeff Lydiatt and D. McClelland, who worked out a fix)
- MEMF_CHIP and MEMF_FAST bits were being set in the
hunk length, rather than in the hunk type. (Richard Man)
- BCHG.L, BCLR.L, BSET.L, and BTST.L were causing
phase errors. The test to ignore the .L specification
(added in version 1.21) was being skipped in pass 1
by an optimization added in version 2.4. (David Hankins)
- PC-relative offset to a label was calculated as two bytes
too great for MOVEM instructions. (Tony Parkhurst)
The following enhancements have been added:
- If the length code on an opcode is not .B, .W, .L, .S,
or omitted, it will be flagged as an error.
- JMP.S and JSR.S are flagged as errors. (Jim Butterfield)
- Operands of the form (xxxx).W and (xxxx).L are now
supported. This enables absolute short or absolute
long addressing to be explicitly specified.
- All optimization can be disabled by the new -n switch.
(David Hankins)
- The NEAR directive can now take a single operand, which
can be any address register (or equated symbol) except
A7. If omitted, the register defaults to A4.
- Instructions of the form BTST Dn,#nn are no longer
flagged. This obscure variant is nonetheless legal.
Version 2.42 (Charlie Gibbs, January 10, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.41 have been corrected:
- Small code/data conversion was sometimes taking place
when no NEAR directive was active. (Jeff Lydiatt)
Version 2.41 (Charlie Gibbs, January 6, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.4 have been corrected:
- The second operand of LINK instructions was
being erroneously flagged.
- If a macro was used before it was defined, it
was being expanded during pass 2 but not during
pass 1, causing severe phase errors. Attempts
to use a macro before it is defined will now
be flagged as invalid opcodes. (Colin Fox)
Version 2.4 (Charlie Gibbs, January 4, 1989)
The following bugs in version 2.31 have been corrected:
- If comments immediately followed the operands of
a DC statement with no intervening white space,
A68k would hang. (Ulf Nordquist)
- In the following command:
a68k -w 15000 myprog.asm
the space between the -w and 15000 would cause A68k
to look for a source file called "15000", and to think
that the object file is to be called "myprog.asm".
When it can't find "15000" it would display an error
message and scratch "myprog.asm". (Jeff Lydiatt)
- If an INCLUDE file that is skipped on pass 2 contains
a macro call, subsequent uses of \@ (macro sequence
number are subsequently flagged. The macro counter
must be bumped along with the line number when
skipping an INCLUDE. (Colin Fox, Harvey Taylor)
The following enhancements have been added:
- ORG and RORG are now fully implemented.
- The SET symbols A68k, a68K, and a68k are defined in the
same way as A68K, making it effectively case-insensitive.
(Colin Fox)
- MOVEM and REG now accept equated register names (EQUR)
in register lists. (Bruce Dawson)
- INCLUDE files will now be skipped on pass 2 even when
a listing file is requested, if the listing has been
turned off by a NOLIST directive before the INCLUDE,
and is not turned on until after the end of the
INCLUDE file has been reached. (Colin Fox)
- A new switch (-f) causes forward branches (Bcc, BRA, BSR)
that could be coded as short branches (Bcc.S etc.) to be
flagged. This flag is not considered to be an error.
- A limited small code / small data model has been provided.
It is activated by a NEAR directive in the source code, and
is de-activated by a FAR directive. External variables
must be declared at the beginning of the program, which
must consist of only two sections (CODE and DATA or BSS).
All forward data references are assumed to be PC-relative
if in the CODE section, A4-relative if in the DATA/BSS
section, and absolute word if absolute values. Any
forward references which cannot be resolved to one of
these three in pass 2 will be flagged as errors, as will
any attempt to define more than two sections. A4 is
assumed to point to the start of the DATA/BSS section
plus 32768 bytes, and must be loaded by a MOVE.L
instruction using immediate mode unless this instruction
is not enclosed within NEAR and FAR directives.
- Miscellaneous optimizations, for speed, including:
Most of the object code generator in pass 1 is bypassed.
If GetValue gets a single term it takes a short cut.
IsOperator now uses a table look-up.
Instructions now only searches that portion of the
opcode table whose opcodes start with the same letter
as the OpCode being searched for.
Version 2.31 (Charlie Gibbs, November 30, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.3 have been corrected:
- Even though a macro definition was being skipped
by IFxx/ENDC, its ENDM directive was still being
detected, causing spurious diagnostics. (Harvey Taylor)
- NOP was not being recognized. When moving all
directives into the opcode table, NOL and NOLIST
were placed after NOP, rather than before. (Colin Fox)
- Symbols defined in the current module and declared
as PUBLIC were not being written to the object code
file when -d was specified. (Colin Fox)
- Conversion of 0(An) to (An) (implemented in version
1.2) was causing errors in the MOVEP instruction,
which requires a displacement even if it is zero.
This conversion is now disabled for MOVEP instructions.
- User macros containing invalid opcodes caused A68k
to get lost when returning to the outer source file.
(Colin Fox)
- Large values of -w (over 6000 or so) would cause
a visit from the Guru. The work field in HashIt
was overflowing and going negative. Changing it
to unsigned corrected the problem. (Colin Fox)
- Although user macros are no longer displayed when
-q is a negative number, the calling file's name
was still being displayed at the end of the macro.
Version 2.3 (Charlie Gibbs, November 21, 1988)
The following enhancements have been added:
- All file I/O has been rewritten to use level 1 I/O
(open, creat, close, read, write, and lseek) instead
of level 2 I/O. A68k now does its own buffering and
unbuffering to reduce system overhead and increase speed.
(Bruce Dawson)
- All assembler directives have been incorporated into
the opcode table. Since the opcode search now looks
up directives as well, speed is increased.
- Miscellaneous code optimization for additional speed.
Version 2.2 (Charlie Gibbs, November 4, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.1 have been corrected:
- Macro definitions within an INCLUDE file were
disabling the test for skipping the file on pass 2.
- Errors encountered in an INCLUDE file on pass 1
were not disabling the skip of the file on pass 2 -
the pertinent error messages could not appear.
- XDEF information and optional symbol table dumps were
not being written to the object code file for any
hunks that did not contain relocatable code or data.
(Colin Fox)
The following enhancements have been added:
- If the -q option is specified as a negative value,
user macros are no longer included in line number
displays, reducing clutter.
- Some source code has been re-arranged to reduce size.
Version 2.1 (Charlie Gibbs, November 1, 1988)
The following bugs in version 2.00 have been corrected:
- Macro definitions that span two chunks of memory
were causing garbage and probably a crash when
the macro was being expanded. Pointers were not
being handled properly when linking the two chunks.
- Statements such as EQU and SET were not being flagged
as illegal forward references if referencing a label
defined on the same line, e.g.
LABEL SET LABEL+1
- The position within macros and INCLUDE files was
sometimes out by one line when reported in error
messages (and the new feature of the -q switch).
The following enhancements have been added:
- If the -q option is specified as a negative value,
line numbers will be displayed as positions within
the current module (whose name is also displayed),
rather than a total statement count. (Bruce Dawson)
- INCLUDE files can be skipped on pass 2 even if they
contain SET statements - the values of all symbols
SET in the INCLUDE file are stored (as at the end
of the file) in a separate table and are patched
when the INCLUDE file is skipped. (Bruce Dawson)
Version 2.00 (Charlie Gibbs, October 26, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.24 have been corrected:
- The last digit of the statement number display
(lengthened in version 1.24) was not being erased
before displaying error messages.
- A68k would go into a loop if a user macro was
missing an ENDC directive. This error is now
flagged (see below).
The following enhancements have been added:
- The highest statement number displayed at the end of
each pass is now left on the screen. This means that,
at the end of pass 1, you can always see how many lines
A68k will have to process in pass 2, giving an idea of
how how much longer you have to wait. (Colin Fox)
- The symbol table is now built using a hashing algorithm.
This eliminates the slowdown that occurs in pass 1 as
the symbol table grows, due to the old insertion process.
(Bruce Dawson)
- If A68k terminates abnormally for any reason (such as
insufficient memory) the object file is scratched
(unless the -k option is set). (Bruce Dawson)
- Any INCLUDE files which cannot be found are flagged
as errors in pass 1, and the assembly is aborted
at the end of pass 1. (Bruce Dawson)
- Missing ENDC directives are flagged in macro expansions.
Also, missing or unpaired ENDC directives in user macros
are flagged.
- If an INCLUDE file doesn't generate any code and no
listing file is required, it won't be read again in
pass 2. The statement numbers will be bumped to keep
in proper alignment. This can really speed up
assemblies that INCLUDE lots of equates. (Colin Fox)
Version 1.24 (Charlie Gibbs, October 11, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.23 have been corrected:
- MOVEA to a data register was not being flagged, even
though all other invalid addressing modes were.
- Attempts to ORG out of the current hunk (including
to an absolute address) were not being flagged. (E. Lenz)
- If the size of the bottom of the primary heap (symbols
and macro text) exceeded 32K, any further macro
definitions would expand as endless garbage. (Colin Fox)
- If the size of the bottom of the primary heap (symbols
and macro text) exceeded 64K, any further external
symbols (XDEF) would be flagged as relocatability
errors upon each reference. (Colin Fox)
The following enhancements have been added:
- Where statement numbers are displayed as fixed-length
fields, their maximum length has been increased
from 4 digits to 5. (Colin Fox)
- The PUBLIC directive has been implemented.
As with the Aztec assembler, any labels defined as
PUBLIC will be treated as XDEF if defined within
the current module, and XREF otherwise. (Jeff Lydiatt)
Version 1.23 (Charlie Gibbs, September 20, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.22 have been corrected:
- The test for a third operand was producing erroneous
error messages on instructions whose second operand
was in immediate mode. The '#' was not being taken
into account, since it is not copied to DestOp.
Version 1.22 (Charlie Gibbs, August 31, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.21 have been corrected:
- Expressions of the form R-A, where R is a relocatable
term or expression and A is an absolute term or
expression, were being flagged as relocation errors.
This was due to a bug in the routine which should
(but did not) flag expressions of the form A-R.
(David Ashley)
- Instructions with three operands were not being
flagged as errors. This can be caused by an extra
comma being typed in the instruction, as in:
BTST #0,state+3,(a5)
The second comma should not be present. (David Ashley)
The following enhancements have been added:
- Excess spacing has been removed from the listing file.
These changes are similar to those already made to the
console output (probably at about version 1.05).
- If the first statement in the source file is TTL or
PAGE, an empty page is no longer produced at the
start of the listing.
Version 1.21 (Charlie Gibbs, July 29, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.2 have been corrected:
- The instruction
BTST.L #8,D0
had a long-word value generated for the bit number.
This bug also applies to BSET, BCLR, and BCHG.
The .L specification is now ignored. (Ulf Nordquist)
Version 1.2 (Charlie Gibbs, July 19, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.12 have been corrected:
The following enhancements have been added:
- Jeff's experimental hunk code (prefixing hunk names
with a sequence number before adding to the symbol
table) has been permanently incorporated. It seems
to work better with BLink on programs that have
hunks continued farther on in the source code.
(Jeff Lydiatt)
- The macro parameter \0, which is replaced by the
size specification in the macro call (B, W, or L,
defaulting to W) is now supported. (Gerald Hull)
- Operands of the form 0(An) will be treated as (An).
(Bruce Dawson)
Version 1.12 (Charlie Gibbs, May 25, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.11 have been corrected:
- If an instruction with no operands (e.g. RTS)
followed a MOVE.L #label,D0 the RTS would be
flagged with a relocatability error. Src.Mode
and Dest.Mode were not being cleared. (Colin Fox)
Version 1.11 (Charlie Gibbs, April 6, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.10 have been corrected:
- A68k would go into a loop while processing the
arguments of a macro call, if these arguments are
followed by comments separated from the arguments
by one or more tab characters, and the -t switch
is specified on the command line. All tests for
blanks have been replaced by calls to isspace().
- The operand alignment checks added in version 1.06
were erroneously testing the following instructions:
- BCHG
- BCLR
- BSET
- BTST
- NBCD
- Scc
- TAS
These instructions are now exempt from alignment checking.
The following enhancements have been added:
- A listing file name can now be specified with the
-x switch; it is no longer necessary to specify
both the -l and -x switches to produce a cross-
reference listing with a name other than the default.
- DS statements with more than one operand are
flagged and ignored (in case they should be DC).
- A character string used as a numeric value is
flagged and set to zero if it is more than four
characters long.
Version 1.10 (Charlie Gibbs, March 20, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.07 have been corrected:
- BSS sections were not being written to the object
code file except for a BSS section at the end of
a program. This is due to a bug in the code added
in version 1.05 to overwrite null sections.
- If a source module contained a mixture of lengths
(8, 16, or 32 bits) in external references (XREF)
to the same label, all references were being treated
as if they has the length of the first reference.
The following enhancements have been added:
- DS operands that are either a forward references
or relocatable are now flagged.
- Short branches (Bcc.S, including BRA and BSR) to
the next instruction (i.e. a displacement of zero)
are illegal - the processor takes the displacement
from the next word. Attempts to generate a short
displacement of zero are now flagged.
Version 1.07 (Charlie Gibbs, March 11, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.06 have been corrected:
- Instructions that take no operands (such as RTS)
were being flagged if they had comments that were
not preceded by a semicolon.
The following enhancements have been added:
- The following synonyms have been added:
CSEG for CODE (Aztec compatibility)
DSEG for DATA " "
ENDIF for ENDC (Assempro compatibility)
= for EQU " "
| for ! " "
- Strings and character values may be delimited by
either apostrophes (') or quotation marks (").
The character not used as a delimiter can be used
within the string without doubling it. For example,
DC.B "This is Charlie's assembler"
produces the same code as
DC.B 'This is Charlie''s assembler';
- The object code file will be scratched if any errors
were found, unless the -k (keep) flag is set.
(Bruce Dawson)
- The symbol .A68K is automatically defined at the
beginning of each assembly as a SET symbol with an
absolute value of 1. This enables programs to check
whether they're being assembled by this assembler.
(Jeff Lydiatt)
- The symbol table insertion routine has been
greatly speeded up.
Version 1.06 (Charlie Gibbs, March 6, 1988)
The following bugs in version 1.05 have been corrected:
- Lines skipped by IFxx/ENDC were not being counted
in the line number given in error messages.
- DATA and BSS sections may be unnamed, or have names
the same as CODE sections. Honest, I thought section
names had to be unique even across types.
- CHIP and FAST options on the CODE, DATA, and BSS
synonyms for the SECTION directive were not being
handled correctly.
- XDEF records and symbol table records (if desired)
were not being produced for symbols defined ahead
of the first object-code producing instruction.
The following enhancements have been added:
- The CNOP instruction can now force alignment
relative to any boundary up to 128 bytes.
The second operand must still be a power of 2.
- The -q switch has been added to change the frequency
with which progress reports (current line number) are
displayed on the console. The default remains at
every 10 lines (-q10). If you specify -q (no interval)
or -q0 the line number displays will be suppressed.
This will make assemblies run slightly faster due to
reduced console I/O. (Bill Henning)
- The -t switch has been added to keep any tabs in the
source file when producing the listing file, as well as
generating tabs elsewhere whenever possible. This
speeds up assemblies and gives smaller listing files,
but such listing files cannot be displayed on devices
that do not assume a tab stop in every 8th position.
(Bruce Dawson)
- Any single-operand instruction with two operands,
and any no-operand instruction with any operands,
will be flagged.
- Relocatable 8- or 16-bit immediate operands
will be flagged. They blow up BLink.
- Named local labels are now supported. Their names
are formed in the same way as normal labels, but are
then preceded by a backslash. Their scope is the
same as normal local labels (nnn$). (Colin Fox)
- An alignment error will be flagged in the following cases:
- Odd displacement on a LINK instruction
- Bcc or DBcc to an odd address
- In any word or long-word instruction, any operand
using the following addressing modes:
- Address register indirect with displacement
- Address register indirect with index and displacement
- Absolute short
- Absolute long
- Program counter indirect with displacement
- Program counter indirect with index and displacement
- LEA and PEA instructions are exempt from these tests.
- If a section is found to contain no data, A68k will
back up to its beginning and overwrite it with the
next section. The result is that null sections
will no longer appear in the object file.
Version 1.05 (Charlie Gibbs, October 30, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.04 have been corrected:
The following enhancements have been added:
- All console output except for error messages is now
sent to stderr - this enables stdout to be redirected,
producing an error file.
- Console (stderr) output has been modified to require
fewer lines on the screen.
- If an error occurs while expanding a macro or INCLUDE
file, the position of the call in each outer file is
given along with the position in the current (innermost)
file. Tracing continues until the outermost file (i.e.
the original source file) is reached.
Version 1.04 (Charlie Gibbs, October 21, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.03 have been corrected:
- MOVE was being converted to MOVEQ regardless of
operand size - this conversion is legal only
for longword MOVEs.
- Modifications to version 1.03 caused bad relocatable
entries to be generated.
Version 1.03 (Charlie Gibbs, October 14, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.02 have been corrected:
The following enhancements have been added:
- The -z option has been added to display the
current source program line on stdout as it
is read, optionally over a given range.
This feature is provided for debugging purposes.
- Bcc, BSR, and DBcc to labels in other than the current
section is now supported. A 16-bit relocation entry
will be generated for each such reference.
- PC relative mode will be generated for backward
references to labels within the current CODE section
if legal for the current instruction. Forward
references will not be converted, since there is
no way of telling which section the label is in
during pass 1.
- The cumulative sizes of all sections by type (i.e.
CODE, DATA, and BSS) will be displayed at the end
of the listing file and the console display.
(Bruce Dawson)
- In the symbol table dump, section names will no
longer be indicated just as SECTION, but rather
as CODE, DATA, or BSS, depending on type.
Version 1.02 (Charlie Gibbs, September 9, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.01 have been corrected:
- Duplicate labels were not being flagged.
- XDEF symbols were not being dumped to the
object code file when the -d option was set.
The following enhancements have been added:
- A header file is now supported. If the parameter
-h<filespec> is included on the command line, the
specified file will be included as if the source
file's first line was " include <filespec>".
The file specification may include a path name,
although the include path names given by the
-i parameter (if any) will also be searched.
- An equate file can now be produced. If the parameter
-e<filespec> is included on the command line, a file
will be written containing EQU statements for any
symbol whose value is absolute. If -e is specified
without <filespec>, the name of the file will be
formed in the same way as the list file, except with
an extension of ".equ". (Bruce Dawson)
The following changes have been made to existing logic:
- No symbol table dump will be produced unless the
-x (cross-reference) switch is set. Formerly a
symbol table dump was always produced, with only
the cross-reference portion optional.
Version 1.01 (Charlie Gibbs, August 20, 1987)
The following bugs in version 1.00 have been corrected:
- Long-word constants and storage areas were being
aligned on a double-word boundary. The only place
where double-word alignment is now forced is at a
break between SECTIONs, since the length of an
AmigaDOS hunk must be a multiple of 4 bytes.
(CNOP 0,4 can still be used if double-word
alignment is desired by the programmer.)
- If a label on an END statement or the first statement
of a SECTION was named in an XDEF statement, it would
not be written to the object code file. The latter
case includes both the label of a SECTION directive
and the label of the first executable instruction in
the absence of any SECTION directives (defaulting to
an unnamed CODE section). In the final case (default
unnamed CODE section), references to XREF symbols
in the first statement would also not be written
to the object code file.
- If the last statement in the source file was not
terminated with a newline character (premature EOF),
it was being ignored altogether.
- A register list as the source operand of a MOVE
instruction was not being flagged as an error.
(MOVE to a register list was being flagged, however.)
- MOVE from USP was generating incorrect code. Also,
MOVE from SR or CCR to an address register was
generating incorrect code rather than being flagged.
Version 1.00 (Charlie Gibbs, June 18, 1987) - initial release