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