We generate operand adjustments automatically, and output small
values as decimal (e.g. LDA FOO-1) and large values as hex (e.g.
LDA FOO+$1000). This change adds a setting for the threshold
between small and large.
The default setting is 8. The previous threshold was 255, which
felt a bit high.
(issue #176)
Fix some typos, clarify some things, and replace a slightly incorrect
pair of PNGs.
Some of the dialogs have gained additional options, but the changes
aren't meaningful enough to warrant taking lots of screen shots.
Added assembler regression tests, for 6502 and 65816.
The "remove formatting" action now clears the flag. It's a bit of a
stretch to call it "formatting" but this feels right.
Updated the documentation, adding a new section about embedded
instructions to the intro material.
SourceGen puts a lot of effort into connecting address operands to
internal offsets and external symbols. Sometimes this is undesirable.
For example, a BIT or conditional branch instruction is sometimes used
as a dummy when there are multiple entry points that vary only in a
status flag or register value. The address in the BIT or branch is
either irrelevant or never actually referenced, so auto-generating a
label for it is annoying.
Having a way to tell the disassembler to disregard an address operand,
so that it won't generate an auto-label or be included in the list of
cross-references, provides a simple solution to this.
The operand's file offset is determined during the code analysis
pass. Setting it to -1 makes the operand look like an external address.
If we disable the project/platform symbol lookup for that instruction
as well, we can avoid label generation and cross-references.
We also need to prevent the 65816 data bank fixup code from restoring
it, and the relocation data code from doing its thing.
The flag is implemented as a new "misc flags" table, which holds a
set of bit flags for every file offset. The "disregard operand address"
flag is set on the opcode byte of instructions. The flags are expected
to be used infrequently, so they're currently output as a list of
(offset, integer) pairs.
The flag is set in the Edit Instruction Operand dialog, which has a
new checkbox. The checkbox is disabled for immediate operands.
(issue #174)
We were treating PEA's operand as an absolute address and attempting to
extend it to 24 bits. This wasn't very successful, and was
counter-productive when the argument was actually a constant, which is
common. Worse, if the operand appeared to reference an internal address
outside bank 0, we would output a 24-bit value, breaking 64tass and cc65.
We now treat PEA as having an immediate operand. (It was already
classified as an "extended immediate", but the operand-address
computation was still happening.)
This will have little to no effect on projects that use OMF relocation
data, because PEA arguments are explicitly identified as symbols or
constants.
New tests were added to 20032-labels-and-symbols to exercise the code
generation failures. A few other tests that used PEA were affected.
20152-local-variables was fixed by adding a symbolic reference, the
others remained as-is and the expected output was revised.
(issue #172)
These are actually 24-bit address tables, with an extra byte to pad
each entry to an even number of bytes, so the GUI refers to them as
"24-bit + pad byte". The extra byte is not included in the address
calculation, and is simply skipped over.
(issue #171)
This allows signed decimal operands to be formatted as such, e.g.
"LDA #$FE" becomes "LDA #-2". This can be applied to immediate
operands and to numeric data pseudo-ops.
Not all assemblers support this in all situations. The asm generators
will output unsigned decimal operands if so.
The 20020- and 20022-operand-formats tests have been updated.
When asked to tag an absolute JMP instruction ($4C) as code, we now
scan forward to see if it's the start of a series of JMPs. If we
find more than one, we offer the opportunity to tag the entire set
all at once.
A series of unformatted JMPs has been added to 20200-ui-edge-cases
for manual testing.
(issue #22)
Most assemblers treat '<' and '>' as byte-select operators. Merlin 32
treats them as shift operators, making '<' effectively a no-op. A
mask is applied based on the length implied by the opcode or pseudo-op,
e.g. "DFB <FOO" will mask off the high bits. This is problematic for
instructions like "LDA <FOO", where the choice between absolute and DP
addressing depends on the value of "<FOO". If FOO is >= $100, the
lack of masking will cause it be treated as absolute. There is
currently no other mechanism to force the use of a direct-page opcode.
The only recourse is to append "&$ff" to the operand, so the
assembler knows that it can be handled as a DP op. The code generator
has been updated to add "&$ff" where needed, based on the label's
value. Unfortunately the assembler doesn't accept this for certain
specific addressing modes; this appears to be a bug.
The relevant test cases (2003x-labels-and-symbols) have been updated
to exercise these situations. The current test projects side-step the
failing assembler behavior by using a DP label instead. These should
be changed to correctly exercise the full behavior, with the code
generator outputting the instructions as raw hex values to work
around bugs.
There are some deliberately broken things (like a duplicate label) in
the 20030 case that were copied into the 20032 case when it was
created. For ease of editing these have been removed from 20032.
(issue #170)
This uses the same (very weak) string search as the current Find
feature, but does it over the entire file. Matches are added to a
table of results and displayed in the same dialog used by the
References panel "copy out" feature.
The reference table now jumps to a Location rather than just the
closest offset, so that we can jump to the middle of a multi-line
comment.
The "edit operand target label" feature now handles local variables.
The individual symbol is edited in the table, the same way it would
if the appropriate option were selected from the Edit Instruction
Operand dialog.
Also, show the address in the Edit Label dialog. It feels
unobtrusive and is occasionally useful.
The References window is handy for seeing everything that refers to
a particular address or symbol, but walking through the list is
annoying because the window gets reset every time you double-click
on an entry and the selection moves.
This adds a "copy out" button that copies the references to a
floating window. References can be double-clicked as usual, but the
list doesn't update unless you click "copy out" again.
This might be better if it were somehow integrated into the main
window, e.g. as a tab in the Info panel, so that the focus isn't
bouncing between two independently Z-ordered windows.
This adds a shortcut for editing the label at the address referenced
by an instruction operand or data address pseudo-op. This can be
activated from the Actions menu, or with Ctrl+Shift+L.
For references inside the file, the Edit Label dialog is opened. For
external addresses, the project symbol editor is opened.
Local variable table entries are currently not supported.
(issue #166)
By default, implicit acc operands are shown, e.g. "LSR A" rather
than just "LSR". I like showing operands for instructions that
have multiple address modes.
Not everyone agrees, so now it's a setting. They're shown by default,
but enabling the option will strip them on-screen, in generated
assembly, and in the instruction chart.
They are always omitted for ACME output, which doesn't allow them.
(issue #162)
Two main changes:
- "Seek nearby targets" is no longer enabled by default.
- The application asks the user to save new projects immediately.
Various minor edits were also made.
A couple of the images are slightly stale, showing ".org" rather than
".addrs", but they're in the advanced section and the difference
isn't notable.
Added the recovery file check when a project is opened, and the GUI
elements for choosing which file to use.
If a recovery file exists but can't be opened, presumably because it's
open by another process, offer to open the project read-only. (This
is a generally good idea, but we don't hold the project file open
in normal usage, so it only works when auto-save is enabled.)
After making a choice, auto-save is disabled until the first manual
save.
One thing we don't do: if we find a recovery file, but auto-save is
disabled, the recovery file won't be deleted after the user makes a
choice. This might be a feature.
Updated documentation.
(issue #161)
The pop-up that lets you choose which assembler to set configuration
options for looked like it let you choose an assembler generally.
Changed some wording and visuals for better clarity.
Added a "format help" button to the long comment edit window. This
brings up a quick summary of the format tags in a modal dialog.
Updated documentation and tutorial.
While it's okay to use ';', the classic Merlin editor will treat it
as an end-of-line comment and shove the entire thing off to the right
side of the screen.
This adds a configuration item to the app settings, with a default
value of ';'.
This adds a new data format option, "binary include", that takes a
filename operand. When assembly sources are generated, the section
of file is replaced with an appropriate pseudo-op, and binary files
are generated that hold the file contents. This is a convenient way
to remove large binary blobs, such as music or sound samples, that
aren't useful to have in text form in the sources.
Partial pathnames are allowed, so you can output a sound blob to
"sounds/blather.bin". For safety reasons, we don't allow the files
to be created above the project directory, and existing files will
only be overwritten if they have a matching length (so you don't
accidentally stomp on your project file).
The files are not currently shown in the GenAsm dialog, which lets
you see a preview of the generated sources. The hex dump tool
can do this for the (presumably rare) situations where it's useful.
A new regression test, 20300-binary-include, has been added. The
pseudo-op name can be overridden on-screen in the settings.
We don't currently do anything new for text/HTML exports. It might
be useful to generate an optional appendix with a hex dump of the
excised sections.
(issue #144)
Note that address region isolation doesn't prevent explicit label
references from working (add update the test to prove it).
Added a note about pre-label xrefs.
If an address resolves to a user label in an isolated region, we
don't want to use it. However, we still want to try to match it
to a project/platform symbol.
For example, suppose the isolated code wants to reference address
$1C00, which is a memory-mapped I/O location in one area, but a
regular bunch of code in the other. We don't want it to map to
the regular code, but we do want it to resolve to our table of
platform I/O addresses.
We now handle this correctly. The regression test has been updated
to check this. The current implementation does a linear scan through
the symbol table, but I'm hoping this is not a common situation.
The reference manual has been updated to describe the new feature.
The cc65 docs say VICE labels start with '.'. Also, output local
labels prefixed with '@', per ca65 convention. The default output
file is now "labels.lbl".
Added some minimal documentation.
(issue #151)
The tutorial was creating a new address region at +000002 without
removing the previous one, which leaves the 16-bit file load address
sitting at $1000 when it should be non-addressable. The text now
shows the correct procedure. Some screen shots had to be recaptured
to show the greyed-out address field.
This doesn't change anything meaningful about the disassembly -- the
PRG optimization hides the region start/end markers either way -- but
it's more correct this way, and it's an opportunity to introduce
the use of non-addressable regions for file headers.
Biggest changes were to the address region handling in Tutorial1
and the use of StdInline.cs for the inline strings in Tutorial4.
Also, fixed the off-by-one error in Tutorial1.
Altered the address region edit UI a little to improve clarity.
Also, close the hex dump viewer window when Escape is hit. (The
tool windows don't have "cancel" buttons, so the key has to be
handled explicitly.)
Added a pop-up menu with three options: default (curly quotes),
straight, and Merlin. Removed the "reset to defaults" buttons.
Also, slightly rearranged the Display Format tab so that the quick
set pop-up is on the left, near the items it affects. Moved the
"use comma-separated format for bulk data" checkbox over as well,
since it's part of the set.
This allows regions that hold variable storage to be marked as data
that is initialized by the program before it is used. Previously
the choices were to treat it as bulk data (initialized) or junk
(totally unused), neither of which are correct.
This is functionally equivalent to "junk" as far as source code
generation is concerned (though it doesn't have to be).
For the code/data/junk counter, uninitialized data is counted as
junk, because it technically does not need to be part of the binary.
This action removes operand formatting from all code and data in the
selected range. In most cases this is equivalent to simply editing
the various items and clicking the "default" format radio button,
but the feature can be used to remove data formats that end up inside
multi-byte instructions. Instructions with such formats cause warnings
and were tricky to fix.
Labels embedded in multi-byte items are also tricky to remove, so this
clears those as well. It does not remove visible labels. This is
done in a single pass, which means that labels that would become visible
after the formatting is cleared will still be removed.
Also, fix inclusion of address range end lines when restoring the
selection. Their peculiar nature -- being associated with the offset
of the last byte of multi-byte items -- was interfering with the
selection save code. This does not add them to the selection when
an address region deletion is undone, since technically they weren't
part of the selection.
Also, moved Edit Note higher in the Actions menu.
Added a warning to the index page that only appears when viewing it
over http/https. The issue is that the manual on the web reflects the
tip-of-tree sources, which may be inaccurate for whatever version the
user has.
Also, provide an alternate path to opening the manual in-app when
under development.
Move the SourceGen manual to a subdirectory in "docs", so that it can
be accessed directly from the 6502bench web site. The place where
it's installed in the distribution doesn't change.
It's useful to have an example of an extension script that handles
multiple types of things. It's also good to show that scripts can
handle data types other than strings, and can chase an address to
format data items elsewhere in the code.
This required updating the tutorial binary, adding the new script,
and updating the tutorial text and associated screen shots.
