Problems assembling TI-style code with ARM-coff assembler

[Charles Lepple]

On Thursday, August 22, 2002, at 12:20 PM, Nick Clifton wrote:

>> asm (" 	.ref _entrytable		");
>> asm ("  .field _entrytable,32	");
>
> Hmm, no idea about these two.  You will have to try to work out what
> they do from the context of how they are used.

.ref is equivalent to .global for most scoping purposes. The TI docs are 
vague about the differences; one is supposed to mean "I'm importing a 
global symbol" and the other says "I'm exporting", but the differences in 
practice appear to be minimal.

".field <symbol>,32" is a definition for a 32-bit field, and can be 
replaced with whatever the ARM assembler wants for a 32-bit word. 
Semantics vary for how fields smaller than 32 bits are packed into words.

Take a look at the TI 'c54x port, as Tim Wall has done a nice job of 
emulating TI's extended assembler syntax. A good portion of the code could 
be shared, especially if there is an easy way of detecting an ARM target 
using TI assembler syntax.

--
Charles Lepple <clepple@ghz.cc>
http://www.ghz.cc/charles/