xkas-plus : another HuC6280 assembler

[elmer]

Looks like it's been available for a few months, but I only just saw it mentioned on RomHacking.

It doesn't look like it's got macros, but the "table" handling for SJIS (or whatever) conversion sounds interesting.

https://github.com/devinacker/xkas-plus

http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,19640.0.html

[Bonknuts]

I think I remember redcomet working on this. Xkas is popular with the hacking crowd IIRC. But.. no macros is a deal breaker for me. I have a custom 68k-ish macro set that I love using with PCE stuffs (as well as vdc macros that are beautiful to look at).

 One of the best assemblers I've ever worked with is AS. Although it supports a bauhgazillion processors - sadly 6280 is not one of them. This is my go to for 68k stuffs (snasm68k is ok for small stuffs, and GNU assembler syntax sucks arse for 68k. I hate it!).

 Edit: Whoops. Wrong link.

[elmer]

I think I remember redcomet working on this. Xkas is popular with the hacking crowd IIRC. But.. no macros is a deal breaker for me.

Me, too. It seemed weird that a modern assembler wouldn't support them, so I took another look at the documentation.

Yep, it does have macros  ... they're documented in the original xkas project before it was forked for xkas-plus.

I have a custom 68k-ish macro set that I love using with PCE stuffs (as well as vdc macros that are beautiful to look at).

Is it rude to ask if you'd be willing to share?  :-"
 

This is my go to for 68k stuffs (snasm68k is ok for small stuffs, and GNU assembler syntax sucks arse for 68k. I hate it!).

I've not AS ... I'll have to take a look. 

I've always heard bad things about the GNU assembler ... but it seemed OK when I used it for small-scale V810 assembly on Zeroigar. Now that you can pass your assembly source through the C pre-processor, it's even got macros.

But I've no idea how horrible its 68000 syntax is.

As for snasm68k ... well ... I can only say that one heck of a lot of commercial Amiga, ST, and Genesis games were written with it.

In its day, it was the best-of-the-best. That day may well have passed a long time ago, though.

When it came to 5th-gen machines, Snasm (i.e. Cross Products) lost a lot of developer sales to PsyQ (their C debugger was miles better).

[Arkhan]

Elmer, did you use this much in the past monthish or so?   I was mostly curious how it compares to simply sticking with PCEAS. 

PCEAS was never exactly awful.   It's HuC that sucks a bit (lot) for things.

[elmer]

Elmer, did you use this much in the past monthish or so?   I was mostly curious how it compares to simply sticking with PCEAS.

I thought about it, but decided that it would be wiser to stick with PCEAS for the Xanadu hacking, because it is known to work.

Since PCEAS is doing everything that I need for the hacking right now, there's not much reason for me to try xkas.

CA65 is definitely the "future" for me.

I've been using CC65/CA65 for my PCE experiments, such as the TED2 investigations, and am loving the flexibility of having a linker again.