[Nasm-devel] Changes to NASM to compile RadiOS

[Yuri Z. <r_...@ya...>]

Hello folks,

Yesterday I assembled RadiOS (my project with about 45000 lines of assembly
code) with the latest NASM. The kernel crashed at the very early stage of
booting with exception 6 (invalid opcode). However, when I re-assembled it
with -O3, it booted fine :)

Two changes to NASM were needed, that I keep in my own local repository since
0.98.39. First, the upper limit of RDOFF export/import label size has to
be increased. FreePascal tends to produce very long labels that don't fit
into the present 64-bit limit. I increased it to 256:

#define EXIM_LABEL_MAX	256

Another feature is RadiOS specific: it uses identifiers whose names start with
'#'. So I'm proposing to add this symbol to the list of start symbols in nasm.h:

#define isidstart(c) ( nasm_isalpha(c) || (c)=='_' || (c)=='.' || (c)=='?' \
                                       || (c)=='@' || c=='#')

None of these changes break any compatibility, but add clear benefit. May we
integrate them into the next nasm-2.08?

By the way, H.Peter, would it be possible for me to become a developer again?
(in other words - can I get the write access to nasm's git repository?)
I would change some things in RDOFF (texinfo documentation, first of all).
If it's not possible, I can always make a patch and post it here, of course :)

-- 
Regards,
Yuri