[LLVMdev] Intel vs. AT&T Assembly.

[Jeff Cohen]

Chris Lattner wrote:
> On Mon, 1 May 2006, Ralph Corderoy wrote:
>
>>
>> NASM might be the nicer target since it's GNU LGPL and runs on multiple
>> OS.  Its home page is broken at the moment, but the manual pages work.
>>
>>    http://nasm.sourceforge.net/doc/html/nasmdoc0.html
>
> That's fine with me.  The instructions are in true intel mode now, the 
> hard part will be to get the pseudo ops to match what the assembler 
> expects.
>
> -Chris

We had this discussion last year.  We need to support the assembler that 
is guaranteed to be present as part of a tool chain, not every assembler 
in existence.  On Unix, where we build with gcc, that is gas.  On 
Windows, that is either again gcc or Visual Studio.  Visual Studio also 
comes with an assembler, ml.exe, and users of Visual Studio will not 
appreciate being forced to download a different assembler.  I doubt 
anyone else would either.  Gas is perfectly happy assembling AT&T 
syntax, so the only assembler that Intel syntax mode needs to support is 
Mircosoft's ml.exe.