PopAsm - The Popular Assembler Project / News: Recent posts

This week PopAsm development was resumed. There is much work to be done before the first alpha version is released, most of which concerns code revision, documentation and testing. The lexer and related classes are next. There is no estimate about when theses tasks will be completed.

PopAsm home page now has a slightly different layout. A frame to the left is expected to make navigation easier. Also, all text has been revised and the latest version of the numeric library has been uploaded. It successfully compiles and runs under both Linux and Windows. Next development steps are now outlined at the Project Status link. It will become a more detailed "to do" list eventually.

In order to make PopAsm easier to develop and make its code easier to read and maintain, its code is being revised. Method names are being changed as necessary to comply with a naming pattern similar to the one adopted by Sun Microsystems.

Also, instrumentation and testing became a primary concern. Source code is being updated with these improvements, as well as a detailed doxygen documentation.

After a rather long time, PopAsm development has been resumed today. Due to personal issues (related to my university) the development speed may not be the one I would like. There is no completion time for the alpha version.

Due to the lack of free time because of the current amount of work at the university, PopAsm will have to wait a little more. There are likely to be minor changes in the source code meanwhile, but the first alpha version has no estimated time of release.

Development will resume when possible. I fear it may take some months until then. Thanks.

PopAsm is 2-years old now. I regret to say that conversely to what has been expected, the first alpha version has not been released yet. There is no estimate of when it will be ready because of my tasks at the university.

Best regards
Helcio Mello

I am finally back to resume PopAsm development. A new version of the user's manual is online.

About the first alpha version, I hope to get it working at Sep 7th, when PopAsm will celebrate its second birthday.

The first draft of the Developer's Manual has finally been released. It documents PopAsm source code in details. It is far from complete, but from now on it is likely to be updated at least weekly. As usual, feedback is always welcome.

Vacation at last! Time to take the dust from the code, eh? Updates on the code and doc should come weekly again from now on.

Merry Christmas for you all.

I am sorry to say I will not be able to work in
PopAsm for the next few weeks. Thats because
the exams at the university are too close...
Well, Ill get back as soon as possible. Bye.

Hey, its Sep 7th. Exactly one year ago I typed PopAsm first line of code. Its amazing how time goes by...

PopAsm is a nice 1yr old baby... I hope he will be a teenager soon enough.

I have decided to take the Lexical Analyser and the Parser out from the download center until I have the time (and patience) to convert them to autoconf packages. The biggest problem I see is that, because there are much more dependencies
now, it will be a little more difficult to reorganize things.

I guess this should not be so bad, once few people would care anyway, because they can download the latest package.

My arms are in bad shape (again). But now I decided to give them sometime to rest. I am also taking therapy, expecting to be healed sooner. Given those circumstances, PopAsm will be stoped for a short while (one week or so, I guess), but I will be back as soon as possible.

Also, will start taking classes to become a Master of Science (M. Sc.) in Computer Science, so I am likely to have less free time for PopAsm. At any rate, if things go fine, I should be a M. Sc. in two years. Wish me luck!

The partial releases are being converted to
autoconf and automake format. At the same time,
the latest version of each file is being included, so
each package named package_name-x.y.z.tar.gz
is up to date. I hope all packages will be done until
next week or so.

For design reasons, instructions are being added
to PopAsm but almost not tested at all. This is
little problem, however, because after the last
instruction is added, each one of them will be
exaustly tested ONE BY ONE, no matter how
long that will take. Of course, this does not mean
my tests are bullet-proof, and so there is a little
chance that bugs may survive those tests.

The last partial release (at Jul 14th 2002) had
nearly all instructions added, except CALL,
JMP, Jcc, LOOP, LOOPcc, SSE and 3DNow!
instructions. I guess they will all be there until
the end of this month.

PopAsm has finally reached its 10,000th line of
code. It may look little for some people, but I
doubt the first usable prototype will be larger
than 15,000 lines. Nevertheless, there is much
ahead. Better exception handling, error messages
and comments are pending, among other things.

It is very difficult to say when the first release will
come, but I hope it will come until the end of this
year. Wish me luck.

PopAsm is in a stage of development where it is
very difficult to make partial releases as single and
independent packages (like numbers and hashtable).

Because of that, at least as long as this stage
lasts, new partial releases will contain all files
of the project. The Makefiles are simple, I know,
but I guess I will be able to put it in autoconf
format in the next days... Sorry if anyone had
problems because of that.

I am having a hard time to keep the partial releases up to date. If I do it, I fear there will be less time to work on the real project. So, from now on, the "Individual Modules" section from the Download Center will no longer hold up to date downloads for the older modules. However, I will keep publishing the new modules there.

I did so because I guess very few people (if any) download those tarballs, instead of checking out the CVS repository. If you are one of such people, please comment this news or mail me, so I can be sure someone is downloading that stuff and that it will be worth it to update it once in a while. Thanks.

I have finally got my degree in Computer
Engineering! Thats why the project has
been stopped lately, but now it is time
to work hard again. Unfortunatelly, my
arms are at their usual state after so
much work: aching. I hope this does not
delay my scheduling even more...