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6502bench/SourceGen/RuntimeData/Help/advanced.html
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<title>Advanced Topics - 6502bench SourceGen</title>
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<h1>6502bench SourceGen: Advanced Topics</h1>
<p><a href="index.html">Back to index</a></p>
<h2><a name="multi-bin">Working With Multiple Binaries</a></h2>
<p>Sometimes a program is split into multiple files on disk. They
may be all loaded at once, or some may be loaded into the same place
at different times. In such situations it's not uncommon for one
file to provide a set of interfaces that other files use. It's
useful to have symbols for these interfaces be available to all
projects.</p>
<p>There are two ways to do this: (1) define a common platform symbol
file with the relevant addresses, and keep it up to date as you work;
or (2) declare the labels as global and exported, and import them
as project symbols into the other projects.</p>
<p>Support for this is currently somewhat weak, requiring a manual
symbol-import step in every interested project. This step must be
repeated whenever the labels are updated.</p>
<p>A different but related problem is typified by arcade ROM sets,
where files are split apart because each file must be flashed to a
separate chip. All files are expected to be present in memory at
once, so there's no reason to treat them as separate projects. Currently,
the best way to deal with this is to concatenate the files into a single
file, and operate on that.</p>
<h2><a name="overlap">Overlapping Address Spaces</a></h2>
<p>Some programs use memory overlays, where multiple parts of the
code run in the same address in RAM. Others use bank switching to access
parts of the program that reside in separate physical RAM, but appear at
the same address.</p>
<p>SourceGen allows you to set the same address on multiple parts of
a file. Branches to a given address are resolved against the current
segment first. For example, consider this:</p>
<pre>
.ORG $1000
JMP L1100
.ORG $1100
L1100 BIT L1100
L1103 LDA #$11
BRA L1103
.ORG $1100
L1100_0 BIT L1100_0
L1103_0 LDA #$22
JMP L1103_0
</pre>
<p>Both sections start at $1100, and have branches to $1103. The branch
in the first section resolves to the label in the first version of
that address chunk, while the branch in the second section resolves to
the label in the second chunk. When branches are outside the current
address chunk, the first chunk that includes that address is used, as
it is with the <code>JMP $1000</code> at the start of the file.</p>
<h2><a name="debug">Debug Menu Options</a></h2>
<p>The DEBUG menu is hidden by default in release builds, but can be
exposed by checking the "enable DEBUG menu" box in the application
settings. These features are used for debugging SourceGen. They will
not help you debug 6502 projects.</p>
<p>Features:</p>
<ul>
<li>Re-analyze (F5). Causes a full re-analysis. Useful if you think
the display is out of sync.</li>
<li>Show Undo/Redo History. Opens a floating window that lets you
watch the contents of the undo buffer while you work.</li>
<li>Show Analyzer Output. Opens a floating window with a text log from
the most recent analysis pass. The exact contents will vary depending
on how the verbosity level is configured internally. Debug messages
from extension scripts appear here.</li>
<li>Show Analysis Timers. Opens a floating window with a dump of
timer results from the most recent analysis pass. Times for individual
stages are noted, as are times for groups of functions. This
provides a crude sense of where time is being spent.</li>
<li>Extension Script Info. Shows a bit about the currently-loaded
extension scripts.</li>
<li>Toggle OwnerDraw. The code list and Notes windows use a ListView
control whose contents are drawn by the application. This menu item
toggles the OwnerDraw flag on and off. Useful for comparing the
owner-drawn output to the system-drawn output.</li>
<li>Toggle Comment Rulers. Adds a string of digits above every
multi-line comment (long comment, note). Useful for confirming that
the width limitation is being obeyed. These are added exactly
as shown, without comment delimiters, into generated assembly output,
which doesn't work out well.</li>
<li>Use Keep-Alive Hack. If set, a "ping" is sent to the extension
script sandbox every 60 seconds. This seems to be required to avoid
an infrequently-encountered Windows bug. (See code for notes and
stackoverflow.com links.)</li>
<li>Source Generation Tests. Opens the regression test harness. See
the README.md in the SGTestData directory for more information. If
the regression tests weren't included in the SourceGen distribution,
this will have nothing to do.</li>
</ul>
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