Chapter 2 Program Development Flow

2.3Programming 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]

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Panasonic MN1030 Programming with Assembler, Required knowledge, Program format, Reference , Using Linker, for details