Chapter 2 Program Development Flow
Programming with Assembler 17
2.3 Programming with Assembler
Before creating programs using the assembler, you must understand the following items.

Required knowledge

• Machine-language instructions
• Device operation
• Editor use
• C compiler use
• Assembler and linker use (in this manual)
• Debugger use
Program development is an iterative process of editing, assembling, linking, and debugging many
times until finished. Therefore, you should as much as possible automate assembler and linker
commands, debugger calls, and error correction.

MAKE

When a program is divided into multiple files for joint development efforts by several programmers, a
control system must be created for assembly and linking without error.
If this is not done, an old undebugged program could be linked within the iterative development
process.
The solution lies with the following program which runs on the workstation or personal computer.
•MAKE
With MAKE the programmer defines the dependency relationships of the files needed to generate the
final executable file and list files. Afterwards MAKE will automatically assemble and link only those
files that have been modified.

Program format

The Cross-Assembler utilizes a program format called section address format.
Section address format specifies the start addresses of programs for each section linked. Even when the
program is divided between multiple files, or when a file is divided into multiple sections, identical
sections are linked together with the same attributes. Therefore, the programmer must create programs
such that addresses do not overlap.
[Reference: Chapter 6, "Using Linker", for details]