You can skip this section if you are familiar with HOWTOs, or just hate to read all this assembly-nonrelated crap.
Copyright © 1999-2000 Konstantin Boldyshev.
Copyright © 1996-1999 Francois-Rene Rideau.
This document may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the LDP License. It may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, provided that this license notice is displayed in the reproduction. Commercial redistribution is permitted and encouraged.
All modified documents, including translations, anthologies, and partial documents, must meet the following requirements:
The most recent official version of this document is available from Linux Assembly and LDP sites. If you are reading a few-months-old copy, consider checking urls above for a new version.
This document aims answering questions of those who program or want to program 32-bit x86 assembly using free software, particularly under the Linux operating system. At many places, Universal Resource Locators (URL) are given for some software or documentation repository. This document also points to other documents about non-free, non-x86, or non-32-bit assemblers, although this is not its primary goal. Also note that there are FAQs and docs about programming on your favorite platform (whatever it is), which you should consult for platform-specific issues, not related directly to assembly programming.
Because the main interest of assembly programming is to build the guts of operating systems, interpreters, compilers, and games, where C compiler fails to provide the needed expressiveness (performance is more and more seldom as issue), we are focusing on development of such kind of software.
If you don't know what free software is,
please do read carefully the GNU General Public License,
which is used in a lot of free software,
and is the model for most of their licenses.
It generally comes in a file named COPYING
(or COPYING.LIB
).
Literature from the
FSF
(free software foundation) might help you, too.
Particularly, the interesting feature of free software
is that it comes with sources that you can consult and correct,
or sometimes even borrow from.
Read your particular license carefully and do comply to it.
This is an interactively evolving document: you are especially invited to ask questions, to answer questions, to correct given answers, to give pointers to new software, to point the current maintainer to bugs or deficiencies in the pages. In one word, contribute!
To contribute, please contact the Assembly-HOWTO maintainer. At the time of this writing, it is Konstantin Boldyshev and no more Francois-Rene Rideau. I (Fare) had been looking for some time for a serious hacker to replace me as maintainer of this document, and am pleased to announce Konstantin as my worthy successor.
I would like to thank following persons, by order of appearance:
Each version includes a few fixes and minor corrections, that need not to be repeatedly mentioned every time.
Few additions to FAQ
Complete rearrangement of INTRODUCTION and RESOURCES; FAQ added to RESOURCES, misc cleanups and additions (and more to come)
Added HLA, TALC; rearrangements in RESOURCES, QUICK START, ASSEMBLERS; few new pointers
finally managed to state LDP license on document, new resources added, misc fixes
new resources on different CPUs
new resources, misc corrections
url updates, changes in GAS example
RESOURCES (former POINTERS) section completely redone, various url updates.
New pointers, updates and some rearrangements. Rewrite of sgml source.
Discussion about libc or not libc continues. New web pointers and and overall updates.
"QUICK START" section rearranged, added GAS example. Several new web pointers.
GAS has 16-bit mode. New maintainer (at last): Konstantin Boldyshev. Discussion about libc or not libc. Added section "QUICK START" with examples of using assembly.
process argument passing (argc,argv,environ) in assembly. This is yet another "last release by Fare before new maintainer takes over". Nobody knows who might be the new maintainer.
clean up and updates.
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corrections about gcc invocation
release for LSL 6th edition.
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info on 16-bit mode access from Linux.
still more on "how not to use assembly"; updates on NASM, GAS.
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Release for DrLinux
Vapor announce of a new Assembly-HOWTO maintainer.
Added section "DO YOU NEED ASSEMBLY?"
NASM moved: now is before AS86
CREDITS section added
first release of the HOWTO as such.
text mini-HOWTO transformed into a full linuxdoc-sgml HOWTO, to see what the SGML tools are like.
*
What? I had forgotten to point to terse???
point to French translated version
NASM is getting pretty slick
more about cross-compiling -- See on sunsite: devel/msdos/
Created the History. Added pointers in cross-compiling section. Added section about I/O programming under Linux (particularly video).
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Francois-Rene "Fare" 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"