[LLVMdev] Intel vs. AT&T Assembly.

[Chris Lattner]

On Mon, 1 May 2006, Jeff Cohen wrote:
> 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,

I agree with the above :)

> so the only assembler that 
> Intel syntax mode needs to support is Mircosoft's ml.exe.

I agree that "the most useful assembler for intel syntax mode to support 
is microsoft's ml.exe", but I don't think it's true that it is the only 
one we can/should support.  If there is little cost to adding NASM 
support (i.e. the code isn't horrible) and if someone produces a patch, we 
would be welcome it.

That said, support for ml.exe certainly sounds more *useful*. :)

-Chris

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