Understanding different versions of MASM

[wilhil]

Hi

I am interested in learning Assembly but before I even get in to code, I am having problems understanding the different versions of MASM!

For example, I found a Wikipedia article that states the latest version was 10.0.30319.1 / April 12, 2010; 5 months ago, however MSDN's version is dated to 1999 and I found a version on the Microsoft Download Center which is 2006.

I tried the 2006 version with no luck as it said I needed VC++ 2005 express (which I really don't understand - and I have VS 2010).

So my question is how does this site/project actually fit in to all of this?

I tried reading various forum posts and the FAQs on the site, but not really getting anywhere so I hope you can help.

[oex]

This project uses version 6.14.... You can get version 6.15 with the 'GeneSys' project or from the VC6 Processor Pack, later versions require Microsoft licenses from purchasing Visual Studio versions I believe.... For licensing info for 6.14 read http://www.masm32.com/license.htm

http://www.masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=8863.0

[jj2007]

Try to download version 6.15 from here. It is the first version that understands SSE2, and you may need it.

All higher versions show little additional value but may be hard to install (huge downloads, dependencies, ...).

An alternative is JWASM: Fully compatible with 6.15 and higher versions.

All this concerns the actual assembler. Do not confuse it with Masm32, which is a very powerful library for use with Masm. You are on the Masm32 forum here.

Some more tips are here.

[brethren]

just download the masm32 package from here http://www.masm32.com/masmdl.htm it comes with everything you need to start asm programming including masm 6.14 and other various tools, a bunch of win32 api header files and libs as well as the masm32 library and a whole slew of help files that'll help start you programming win32 asm. it also comes with an assembly developers editor authored by the maintainer of this forum

because you're just starting out in assembly language programming it'll be a long time before you need to upgrade the assembler to a later version