HLA on Linux uses fasm

[Allan]

Hi Dr. Hyde,

Thanks for making HLA available on Linux.  If possible I would like to change the assembler used to as to be compatible with other things I'm doing.  Is that possible?

Allan

[Randall Hyde]

Hi Dr. Hyde,

Thanks for making HLA available on Linux.  If possible I would like to change the assembler used to as to be compatible with other things I'm doing.  Is that possible?

Allan

Well, if the "other assembler" you'd like to make it be compatible with is GAS, that's a no-brainer. Just rename "hla" to "ghla" and it will generate GAS (as) code rather than FASM code. Or you can use the -xg command-line parameter to achieve the same result.

If you want to use a *different* assembler as the back-end to HLA (e.g., NASM), well that's going to be a *lot* more work. That involves making some heavy changes to the HLA compiler itself (I once started a NASM port many years ago but gave up because NASM wasn't quite capable of doing what I needed at the time; however, NASM has been improved since then so it *might* be possible today).

HOWEVER, as you can see by the announcement I made just before responding to your post, the HLA v2.0 initiative is coming along nicely. I've hit code complete on the HLA stdlib v2.x (still need to document the library code, though). The next step is to port HLA v1.x and the HLA stdlib v2.x to FreeBSD and Mac OSX (FreeBSD should be pretty easy, Mac OSX I'm not sure about yet).  When those two projects are done, I'm back to work on the HLA v2.0 compiler itself.  The HLA v2.0 compiler will have user-replaceable code generator modules and it should be pretty easy to write a back-end that generates output for *any* assembler (or object module format, for that matter). If your "compatible assembler" isn't GAS, I'd recommend waiting (just don't hold your breath!) for the HLA v2.0 system.

hLater,
Randy Hyde

[Allan]

Thanks very much, the assembler I wanted to use is GAS.  Looking forward to HLA 2.0.

Allan