Skylord123This is a distribution of NASM, the Netwide Assembler. NASM is a prototype general-purpose x86 assembler. It will currently output flat-form binary files, a.out, COFF and ELF Unix object files, Microsoft Win32 and 16-bit DOS object files, OS/2 object files, the as86 object format, and a home-grown format called RDOFF. Also included is NDISASM, a prototype x86 binary-file disassembler which uses the same instruction table as NASM. To install NASM on UNIX or Linux, type `./configure', then `make', and then either `make install', or copy the file `nasm' (and maybe `ndisasm') to a directory on your search path (maybe /usr/local/bin, or ~/bin if you don't have root access). You may also want to copy the man page `nasm.1' (and maybe `ndisasm.1') to somewhere sensible. Note that source and binaries are also available in RPM format; to install an RPM on a system which uses this packaging format (mostly Linux distributions) simply do "rpm -Uivh filename.rpm". To install under DOS, if you don't need to rebuild from the sources, you can just copy either nasm.exe and ndisasm.exe (32-bit DOS-extended versions), nasmr.exe and ndisasmr.exe (16-bit classical DOS executables), or nasmw.exe and ndisasmw.exe (Win32 console applications - less likely to run out of memory), to somewhere on your PATH. The 32-bit applications require a DPMI server. If you're running under plain DOS and don't have a DPMI server already, you can get CSDPMI from ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2misc/. To rebuild the DOS sources, various makefiles are provided: - Makefile.dos, the one I build the standard 16-bit releases from, designed for a hybrid system using Microsoft C and Borland Make (don't ask why :-) - Makefile.vc, for Microsoft Visual C++ compiling to a Win32 command-line application. This is the one I build the standard Win32 release binaries from. - Makefile.bor, for Borland C. - Makefile.bc2, also for Borland C, contributed by Fox Cutter. Reported to work better than Makefile.bor on some systems. - Makefile.sc, for Symantec C++, compiling to a 32-bit extended DOS executable.. Contributed by Mark Junker. - Makefile.scw, also for Symantec C++, compiling to a Win32 command- line application. Also contributed by Mark Junker. - Makefile.wc, for Watcom C, compiling to a 32-bit extended DOS executable. Contributed by Dominik Behr. - Makefile.wcw, also for Watcom C, compiling to a Win32 command- line application. Also contributed by Dominik Behr. - Makefile.dj, for DJGPP, compiling to a 32-bit extended DOS executable. Contributed by Dominik Behr. - Makefile.lcc, for lcc-win32, compiling to a Win32 command line application. (The lcc-win32 compiler and tools are available from http://www.remcomp.com/lcc-win32/) I can't guarantee that all of those makefiles work, because I don't have all of those compilers. However, Makefile.dos and Makefile.vc work on my system, and so do Makefile.bor and Makefile.bc2. Be careful with Borland C: there have been various conflicting reports about how reliable the Huge memory model is. If you try to compile NASM in Large model, you may get DGROUP overflows due to the vast quantity of data in the instruction tables. I've had reports from some people that Huge model doesn't work at all (and also reports from others that it works fine), so if you don't want to try moving to Huge, you could try adding the option `-dc' to the compiler command line instead, which causes string literals to be moved from DGROUP to the code segments and might make Large model start working. (Either solution works for me.) To rebuild truly from scratch, or to make any changes to insns.dat or standard.mac, you need a Perl interpreter installed. Perl interpreters are available for a number of platforms, from: http://www.cpan.org/ports/ For DOS you can also get one from: ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/gnu/djgpp/v2gnu/ Dominik Behr has also contributed the file misc/pmw.bat, which is a batch file to turn the output from Makefile.wc (NASM.EXE and NDISASM.EXE) into standalone executables incorporating Tran's PMODE/W DOS extender, rather than depending on an external extender program. Some of the Windows makefiles produce executables called nasmw.exe and ndisasmw.exe, and some don't. Be prepared for either... If you want to build a restricted version of NASM containing only some of the object file formats, you can achieve this by adding #defines to `outform.h' (see the file itself for documentation), or equivalently by adding compiler command line options in the Makefile. There is a machine description file for the `LCC' retargetable C compiler (version 4.0), in the directory `lcc', along with instructions for its use. This means that NASM can now be used as the code-generator back end for a useful C compiler. Michael `Wuschel' Tippach has ported his DOS extender `WDOSX' to enable it to work with the 32-bit binary files NASM can output: the original extender and his port `WDOSX/N' are available from his web page, http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4493. Matt Mastracci has written a document explaining how to write assembly language modules in DJGPP programs using NASM: it's on his web site at http://www.ucalgary.ca/~mmastrac/djgppasm.doc. The `misc' directory contains `nasm.sl', a NASM editing mode for the JED programmers' editor (see http://space.mit.edu/~davis/jed.html for details about JED). The comment at the start of the file gives instructions on how to install the mode. This directory also contains a file (`magic') containing lines to add to /etc/magic on Unix systems to allow the `file' command to recognise RDF files, and a zip file (`exasm.zip') containing the necessary files for syntax highlighting in the Aurora DOS editor. (The Aurora files were contributed by <U993847220@aol.com>; I haven't tested them as I don't have Aurora.) The `rdoff' directory contains sources for a linker and loader for the RDF object file format, to run under Linux, and also documentation on the internal structure of RDF files. For information about how you can distribute and use NASM, see the file Licence. We were tempted to put NASM under the GPL, but decided that in many ways it was too restrictive for developers. For release 0.98 and later, the NASM source distribution contains the following components: Unix Windows, OS/2 DOS nasm-X.XX.tar.gz nasm-X.XX.zip nasmXXXs.zip Main archive: Contain all sources you need to build NASM, plus the documentation source code. If you have a Perl interpreter and (possibly) Winhelp compiler installed, you don't need any additional files. nasm-X.XX-xdoc.tar.gz nasm-X.XX-xdoc.zip nasmXXXd.zip Documentation in HTML, INFO, text, and PostScript format. You can compile these files yourself from the main archive if you have a Perl interpreter installed. N/A nasm-X.XX-whlp.zip N/A Documentation in Windows help format. You can compile this file yourself from the main archive if you have a Perl interpreter and a Winhelp compiler installed. The Unix, Windows-OS/2, and DOS versions differ in the following ways: The Unix version uses the Unix line ending convention (LF), and long file names with upper and lower case. The Windows-OS/2 version uses the Microsoft line ending convention (CR+LF), and long file names with upper and lower case. The DOS version uses the Microsoft line ending convention (CR+LF), with all filenames in 8.3 monocase. For information about how to use NASM, see the various forms of documentation in the `doc' directory: documentation is provided in HTML, PostScript, plain text, Texinfo, and Windows Help formats. For information about how to use NDISASM, see `ndisasm.doc'. For information about the internal structure of NASM, see `internal.doc'. (In particular, _please_ read `internal.doc' before writing any code for us...) The NASM web page is at http://www.cryogen.com/Nasm/ Bug reports (and patches if you can) should be sent to <hpa@zytor.com>.