From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <616f0c88d4d9cacc230a6593fd84805c@plan9.bell-labs.com>
From: jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: RE: [9fans] flatassembler on Plan 9?
In-Reply-To: <81132473206F3A46A72BD6116E1A06AE479C6C@black.aprote.com>
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Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2003 11:35:47 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 3b14c3b8-eacc-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

On Tue Sep 16 07:57:27 EDT 2003, t.lankots@aprote.ee wrote:
> $ find sys -name '*.s' -exec wc -l \{\} \; |awk 'BEGIN {sum=0}
> > {print $0; sum += $1}
> > END {print sum}'
>     423 sys/src/9/alphapc/l.s
>     197 sys/src/9/alphapc/memmove.s
>      61 sys/src/9/alphapc/memset.s
>     103 sys/src/9/bitsy/bitsyreset.s
>      12 sys/src/9/bitsy/init9.s
>     856 sys/src/9/bitsy/l.s
>     119 sys/src/9/mtx/inb.s
>     567 sys/src/9/mtx/l.s
>     110 sys/src/9/pc/apbootstrap.s
>      98 sys/src/9/pc/apmjump.s
>      23 sys/src/9/pc/initcode.s
>     830 sys/src/9/pc/l.s
>      52 sys/src/9/pc/plan9l.s
>     126 sys/src/9/pc/ptclbsum386.s
>      54 sys/src/9/pc/rebootcode.s
>      29 sys/src/9/ppc/init9.s
>     841 sys/src/9/ppc/l.s
> 4501
>
> That's 4501 lines of assembly for _all_ architechtures.


A few weeks ago I looked for an alternative to writing x86 assembler (especially
the 16-bit mode stuff) and this was one I looked at, but it didn't look worth the
effort to change the output format and figure out how to bootstrap it.
Others I looked at all seemed to have similar problems or were handicapped by some
form of licence.

I'm always in 2 minds when it comes to this. We'd manage much better code for
bootstraps, etc. but we'd run the risk of overusing it. Also, every time I need
to use it is, I'm sure, the last time...

The list above is a minimal set, you really do need to write some stuff in the
C library in assembler too.