Copyright © 1996-1999 by François-René Rideau.
This document is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This is an interactively evolving document: you are especially invited to ask questions, to answer to questions, to correct given answers, to add new FAQ answers, to give pointers to other software, to point the current maintainer to bugs or deficiencies in the pages. If you're motivated, you could even take over the maintenance of the HOWTO. In one word, contribute!
To contribute, please contact whoever appears to maintain the Assembly-HOWTO. At the time of this writing, it's me, i.e. .
However, it's been some time since I've been looking for a serious hacker to replace me as maintainer of this document. Disadvantages are you must spend some time updating and correcting the document, and learning the LDP publication tools. Advantages are you get some fame and you can receive complimentary copies of HOWTO compendiums.
This document aims at answering frequently asked questions of people who program or want to program 32-bit x86 assembly using free software, particularly under the Linux operating system. It may also point to other documents about non-free, non-x86, or non-32-bit assemblers, though such is not its primary goal.
Because the main interest of assembly programming is to build to write the guts of operating systems, interpreters, compilers, and games, where a C compiler fails to provide the needed expressiveness (performance is more and more seldom an issue), we stress on development of such software.
This document contains answers to some frequently asked questions. At many places, Universal Resource Locators (URL) are given for some software or documentation repository. Please see that the most useful repositories are mirrored, and that by accessing a nearer mirror site, you relieve the whole Internet from unneeded network traffic, while saving your own precious time. Particularly, there are large repositories all over the world, that mirror other popular repositories. You should learn and note what are those places near you (networkwise). Sometimes, the list of mirrors is listed in a file, or in a login message. Please heed the advice. Else, you should ask archie about the software you're looking for...
The most recent version for this documents sits in http://www.tunes.org/~fare/files/asm/Assembly-HOWTO.en.sgml but what's in Linux HOWTO repositories should be fairly up to date, too (I can't know): http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/HOWTO/. A french translation of this HOWTO can be found around ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/french/HOWTO/.
COPYING,
with a library version in a file named COPYING.LIB.
Literature from the
FSF
(free software foundation) might help you, too.
Each version includes a few fixes and minor corrections, which needs not be repeatedly mentionned every time.
Francois-Rene "Faré" Rideau <fare@tunes.org> creates and publishes the first mini-HOWTO, because ``I'm sick of answering ever the same questions on comp.lang.asm.x86''
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Created the History. Added pointers in cross-compiling section. Added section about I/O programming under Linux (particularly video).
more about cross-compiling -- See on sunsite: devel/msdos/
NASM is getting pretty slick
point to french translated version
What? I had forgotten to point to terse???
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text mini-HOWTO transformed into a full linuxdoc-sgml HOWTO, to see what the SGML tools are like.
first release of the HOWTO as such.
CREDITS section added
NASM moved: now is before AS86
Added section "DO YOU NEED ASSEMBLY?"
Vapor announce of a new Assembly-HOWTO maintainer.
Release for DrLinux
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still more on "how not to use assembly"; updates on NASM, GAS.
info on 16-bit mode access from Linux.
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release for LSL 6th edition.
corrections about gcc invocation
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clean up and updates.
This is yet another ``last release by Faré before new maintainer takes over''. Only nobody knows who the new maintainer might be.
I would like to thanks the following persons, by order of appearance:
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