diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'TODO')
| -rw-r--r-- | TODO | 347 |
1 files changed, 339 insertions, 8 deletions
@@ -1,8 +1,339 @@ -Things to do (incorporate with doc/Wishlist): - -1. i18n via gettext -2. Convert shallow code model to deep code model. Tired of messing between -lots of unrelated files (especially .c/.h stuff). -3. Automated dependency generation for Makefile. Current looks awful and will break -if anything changes. -4. (as result of 2) Move output modules out*.c to output/ subdir. (?) +NASM TODO list +============== + +This, like the AUTHORS file, is intended for easy readability by both human +and machine, thus the format. + + F: feature + V: version you should expect it by + R: responsible person or - if unassigned + C: % complete + D: description + D: maybe on multiple lines + +Anything that doesn't start with /^[FVRCD]:/ should be ignored. + + F:-line triggers new entry. + Empty V,R,C assume: V: ?, R: -, C: 0% + +============= + +F: i18n via gettext + +F: Convert shallow code model to deep code model +D: Tired of messing between lots of unrelated files (especially .c/.h stuff) + +F: Automated dependency generation for Makefile +D: Current looks awful and will break if anything changes. + +F: Move output modules out*.c to output/ subdir +R: madfire +C: 10% + +== THESE ARE FROM old NASM's Wishlist +== THEY NEED SEVERE REVISING (seems they weren't updated for a couple of years or so) + +F: Check misc/ide.cfg into RCS as Watcom IDE enhancement thingy +V: 0.98 +D: (nop@dlc.fi) + +F: Package the Linux Assembler HOWTO +V: 0.98 + +F: 3DNow!, SSE and other extensions need documenting +V: 0.98 +D: hpa: Does it really make sense to have a whole instruction set +D: reference packaged with the assembler? + +F: prototypes of lrotate don't match in test/*. Fix. +V: 0.98 + +F: Build djgpp binaries for 0.98 onwards. Look into PMODE/W as a stub +V: 0.98 +D: it might be a lot better than CWSDPMI. It's in PMW133.ZIP. + +F: %undef operator that goes along with %define +V: ? +C: 100% + +F: Fix `%error' giving error messages twice. +V: 0.99 +D: Not especially important, as changes planned for 1.1x below will make +D: the preprocessor be only called once. + +F: Sort out problems with OBJ +V: 0.99 +D: * TLINK32 doesn't seem to like SEGDEF32 et al. So for that, we +D: should avoid xxx32 records wherever we can. +D: * However, didn't we change _to_ using xxx32 at some stage? Try +D: to remember why and when. +D: * Apparently Delphi's linker has trouble with two or more +D: globals being defined inside a PUBDEF32. Don't even know if it +D: _can_ cope with a PUBDEF16. +D: * Might need extra flags. *sigh* + +F: Symbol table output may possibly be useful. +V: 0.99 +D: Ken Martwick (kenm@efn.org) wants the following format: +D: labelname type offset(hex) repetition count +D: Possibly include xref addresses after repetition count? + +F: ELF fixes +V: 0.99 +D: There are various other bugs in outelf.c that make certain kinds +D: of relocation not work. See zbrown.asm. Looks like we may have to do +D: a major rewrite of parts of it. Compare some NASM code output with +D: equivalent GAS code output. Look at the ELF spec. Generally fix things. + +F: ELF fixes +V: 0.99 +D: NASM is currently using a kludge in ELF that involves defining +D: a symbol at a zero absolute offset. This isn't needed, as the +D: documented solution to the problem that this solves is to use +D: SHN_UNDEF. + +F: Debug information, in all formats it can be usefully done in. +V: 0.99 +D: * including line-number record support. +D: * "George C. Lindauer" <gclind01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu> +D: wants to have some say in how this goes through. +D: * Andrew Crabtree <andrewc@rosemail.rose.hp.com> wants to help out. + +F: Think about a line-continuation character. +V: 0.99 + +F: Consider allowing declaration of two labels on the same line, +V: 0.99 +D: syntax 'label1[:] label2[:] ... instruction'. +D: Need to investigate feasibility. + +F: Quoting of quotes by doubling them, in string and char constants. +V: 0.99 + +F: Two-operand syntax for SEGMENT/SECTION macro to avoid warnings +D: of ignored section parameters on reissue of __SECT__. +D: Or maybe skip the warning if the given parameters are identical to +D: what was actually stored. Investigate. +V: 0.99 + +F: Apparently we are not missing a PSRAQ instruction, because it +D: doesn't exist. Check that it doesn't exist as an undocumented +D: instruction, or something stupid like that. +V: 0.99 + +F: Any assembled form starting 0x80 can also start 0x82. +V: 1.00 +D: ndisasm should know this. New special code in instruction encodings, probably. + +F: Pointing an EQU at an external symbol now generates an error. +V: 1.05 +D: There may be a better way of handling this; we should look into it. +D: Ideally, the label mechanism should be changed to cope with one +D: label being declared relative to another - that may work, but could be +D: a pain to implement (or is it? it may be easy enough that you just +D: need to declare a new offset in the same segment...) This should be done +D: before v1.0 is released. There is a comment regarding this in labels.c, +D: towards the end of the file, which discusses ways of fixing this. + +F: nested %rep used to cause a panic. +V: 1.10 +D: Now a more informative error message is produced. This problem whould +D: be fixed before v1.0. +D: See comment in switch() statement block for PP_REP in do_directive() +D: in preproc.c (line 1585, or thereabouts) + +F: Contribution +D: zgraeme.tar contains improved hash table routines +D: contributed by Graeme Defty <graeme@HK.Super.NET> for use in the +D: label manager. + +F: Contribution +D: zsyntax.zip contains a syntax-highlighting mode for +D: NASM, for use with the Aurora text editor (??). + +F: Contribution +D: zvim.zip contains a syntax-highlighting mode for NASM, for use with vim. + +F: Contribution +D: zkendal1.zip and zkendal2.zip contain Kendall +D: Bennett's (<KendallB@scitechsoft.com>) alternative syntax stuff, +D: providing an alternative syntax mode for NASM which allows a macro +D: set to be written that allows the same source files to be +D: assembled with NASM and TASM. +R: Kendall Bennett +C: 100% + +F: Add the UD2 instruction. +C: 100% + +F: Add the four instructions documented in 24368901.pdf (Intel's own document). +C: 100% + +F: Some means of avoiding MOV memoffs,EAX which apparently the +D: Pentium pairing detector thinks modifies EAX. Similar means of +D: choosing instruction encodings where necessary. +V: 1.10? + +F: The example of ..@ makes it clear that a ..@ label isn't just +D: local, but doesn't make it clear that it isn't just global either. + +F: hpa wants an evaluator operator for ceil(log2(x)). + +F: Extra reloc types in ELF +D: R_386_16 type 20, PC16 is 21, 8 is 22, PC8 is 23. +D: Add support for the 16s at least. + +F: Lazy section creation or selective section output +D: in COFF/win32 at least and probably other formats: don't bother to emit a section +D: if it contains no data. Particularly the default auto-created +D: section. We believe zero-length sections crash at least WLINK (in win32). + +F: Make the flags field in `struct itemplate' in insns.h a long instead of an int. +C: 100%? + +F: Implement %ifref to check whether a single-line macro has ever been expanded since (last re) definition. Or maybe not. We'll see. + +F: add pointer to \k{insLEAVE} and \k{insENTER} in chapters about mixed-language programming. + +F: Some equivalent to TASM's GLOBAL directive +D: ie something which defines a symbol as external if it doesn't end up being defined +D: but defines it as public if it does end up being defined. + +F: Documentation doesn't explain about C++ name mangling. + +F: see if BITS can be made to do anything sensible in obj (eg set the default new-segment property to Use32). + +F: OBJ: coalesce consecutive offset and segment fixups for the same location into full-32bit-pointer fixups. +D: This is apparently necessary because some twazzock in the PowerBASIC development +D: team didn't design to support the OMF spec the way the rest of the +D: world sees it. + +F: Allow % to be separated from the rest of a preproc directive, for alternative directive indentation styles. + +F: __DATE__, __TIME__, and text variants of __NASM_MAJOR__ and __NASM_MINOR__. + +F: Warn on TIMES combined with multi-line macros. +V: 1.00 +D: TIMES gets applied to first line only - should bring to users' attention. + +F: Re-work the evaluator, again, with a per-object-format fixup +D: routine, so as to be able to cope with section offsets "really" +D: being pure numbers; should be able to allow at _least_ the two +D: common idioms +D: TIMES 510-$ DB 0 ; bootsector +D: MOV AX,(PROG_END-100H)/16 ; .COM TSR +D: Would need to call the fixup throughout the evaluator, and the +D: fixup would have to be allowed to return UNKNOWN on pass one if it +D: had to. (_Always_ returning UNKNOWN on pass one, though a lovely +D: clean design, breaks the first of the above examples.) +V: 1.10 + +F: Preprocessor identifier concatenation? +V: 1.10 + +F: Arbitrary section names in `bin'. +V: 0.98.09 +D: Is this necessary? Is it even desirable? +D: hpa: Desirable, yes. Necessary? Probably not, but there are definitely cases where it becomes quite useful. +R: madfire +C: 100% + +F: Ability to read from a pipe. +V: 1.10 +D: Obviously not useful under dos, so memory problems with storing +D: entire input file aren't a problem either. + +F: File caching under DOS/32 bit... +V: 1.10? +D: maybe even implement discardable buffers that get thrown away +D: when we get a NULL returned from malloc(). Only really useful under +D: DOS. Think about it. + +F: possibly spool out the pre-processed stuff to a file, to avoid having to re-process it. +V: 1.10? +D: Possible problems with preprocessor values not known on pass 1? Have a look... + +F: Or maybe we can spool out a pre-parsed version...? +V: 1.10 +D: Need to investigate feasibility. Does the results from the parser +D: change from pass 1 to pass 2? Would it be feasible to alter it so that +D: the parser returns an invariant result, and this is then processed +D: afterwards to resolve label references, etc? + +F: Subsection support? + +F: A good ALIGN mechanism, similar to GAS's. +V: 0.98p1 +D: GAS pads out space by means of the following (32-bit) instructions: +D: 8DB42600000000 lea esi,[esi+0x0] +D: 8DB600000000 lea esi,[esi+0x0] +D: 8D742600 lea esi,[esi+0x0] +D: 8D7600 lea esi,[esi+0x0] +D: 8D36 lea esi,[esi] +D: 90 nop +D: It uses up to two of these instructions to do up to 14-byte pads; +D: when more than 14 bytes are needed, it issues a (short) jump to +D: the end of the padded section and then NOPs the rest. Come up with +D: a similar scheme for 16 bit mode, and also come up with a way to +D: use it - internal to the assembler, so that programs using ALIGN +D: don't knock over preprocess-only mode. +D: Also re-work the macro form so that when given one argument in a +D: code section it calls this feature. +R: Panos Minos +C: 100%? + +F: Possibly a means whereby FP constants can be specified as immediate operands to non-FP instructions. +D: * Possible syntax: MOV EAX,FLOAT 1.2 to get a single-precision FP +D: constant. Then maybe MOV EAX,HI_FLOAT 1.2 and MOV EAX,LO_FLOAT +D: 1.2 to get the two halves of a double-precision one. Best to +D: ignore extended-precision in case it bites. +D: * Alternatively, maybe MOV EAX,FLOAT(4,0-4,1.2) to get bytes 0-4 +D: (ie 0-3) of a 4-byte constant. Then HI_FLOAT is FLOAT(8,4-8,x) +D: and LO_FLOAT is FLOAT(8,0-4,x). But this version allows two-byte +D: chunks, one-byte chunks, even stranger chunks, and pieces of +D: ten-byte reals to be bandied around as well. + +F: A UNION macro might be quite cool +D: now that ABSOLUTE is sane enough to be able to handle it. + +F: An equivalent to gcc's ## stringify operator, plus string concatenation +D: somehow implemented without undue ugliness, so as +D: to be able to do `%include "/my/path/%1"' in a macro, or something +D: similar... + +F: Actually _do_ something with the processor, privileged and +D: undocumented flags in the instruction table. When this happens, +D: consider allowing PMULHRW to map to either of the Cyrix or AMD +D: versions? +D: hpa: The -p option to ndisasm now uses this to some extent. +V: 1.10 + +F: Maybe NEC V20/V30 instructions? ? +D: hpa: What are they? Should be trivial to implement. + +F: Yet more object formats. +D: * Possibly direct support for .EXE files? +V: 1.10 + +F: Symbol map in binary format. Format-specific options... +V: 1.10? + +F: REDESIGN: Think about EQU dependency, and about start-point specification in OBJ. Possibly re-think directive support. +V: 1.20? + +F: Think about a wrapper program like gcc? +V: 2.00? +D: Possibly invent a _patch_ for gcc so that it can take .asm files on the command line? +D: If a wrapper happens, think about adding an option to cause the +D: resulting executable file to be executed immediately, thus +D: allowing NASM source files to have #!... (probably silly) + +F: Multi-platform support? +D: If so: definitely Alpha; possibly Java byte code; +D: probably ARM/StrongARM; maybe Sparc; maybe Mips; maybe +D: Vax. Perhaps Z80 and 6502, just for a laugh? + +F: Consider a 'verbose' option that prints information about the resulting object file onto stdout. + +F: Line numbers in the .lst file don't match the line numbers in the input. +D: They probably should, rather than the current matching of the post-preprocessor line numbers. |