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I'd like to learn assembler. However, there are very few resources for doing assembler with OS X.
Is there anyone out there who has programmed in assembly on a Mac? Where did you learn?
And, is there any reason I shouldn't be doing assembly? Do I risk (significantly) crashing my computer irreparably?
If you're using a PowerPC Mac, look into gcc inline assembler. Otherwise, look into nasm. I can't give any decent references to PPC ASM (they're few and far between), but I suggest the following things to learn x86 asm:
The book Reversing by Eldad Eilam
Compile simple C source with gcc -S and read the assembly generated
Use Sandpile
Join #openrce on irc.freenode.net and use OpenRCE
Also, if you're not in kernel mode then there's no chance of screwing anything up, really, and even if you are in kernel mode it's hard to really destroy anything.
Edit: Also, get gcc and such from XCode not Macports or somesuch. You're in for a world of malformed Mach-O files if you don't. Not fun to diagnose file format issues when you're just starting asm hacking.
The assembler language is determined by the hardware platform, not the operating system. Given that OS X runs on Intel platform and is 64-bit, you should look for information on x64 (also called AMD64) assembler. Check the Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64) for a lot of links to documentation about x64.
Also, the OS X tools documentation might contains a lot of information about x64 assembler. In particular, the Netwide Assembler (NASM - http://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeveloperTools/nasm/nasmdoc0.html) might have documentation on how to build OS X applications using assembler.
To start learning assembly, you might want to start with simple C programs and ask GCC to generate the assembler code for it using the -S option:
gcc -S hello.c -o hello.asm
You will then be able to understand how to call functions, pass arguments, etc.
Nasm/yasm are your best bet; gcc inline syntax is quite crippling and can be very painful to use at times, plus there are literally some things it cannot do. Nasm's macro syntax is also much much more useful, a godsend in a language like assembly that has no built-in templating features.
XCode (ie. GCC) has great support for writing assembler. It's a fun thing to learn (although you're unlikely to need it much), and the worst you can do is crash the program you're writing, same as in C. Just Google for 'gcc inline asm x86 tutorial' and you should find plenty of starting points. Don't worry that some will seem to be Linux specific, they'll generally work just as well in XCode.
(edit) ...assuming you have an Intel Mac of course; if not then replace 'x86' with 'ppc'.
here
I programmed assembly on a Mac. It was Motorola 680x0 assembler using MPW. I've touched on the PowerPC assembler a few times in CodeWarrior and ProjectBuilder. Now ProjectBuilder is called XCode, and there is Intel. The assembler is one of the many tools within XCode.
I originally learned assembler on the Apple II: the 6502 machine language monitor built in ROM, the Sweet16 mini-assembler, and others. Later, I used Intel 80186 assembler to speed up slow bits of C code, and work paid for a one day course on Intel 80186 assembler at a university. Later, I had to maintain some 680x0 assembly for the Mac. That was a long time ago.
I don't think there is any reason not to do assembly. Learning is great. Learn all you can. Drop into a low enough level debugger and look at the disassembled code.
My advice is:
Don't be scared.
There's no reason why you shouldn't; there is nothing you can do in assembly language that you can't do in a higher level language like C.
As far as tools go, you might want to install MacPorts and get the GNU assembler. That may or may not be the easiest way, but it's free and you can probably find tutorial documentation for writing Unix programs in GNU assembler somewhere on the net.
There are two three things you to know need for writing assembly language on a system with an operating system (as opposed to 'bare metal' assembly which is a world of its own):
How the instruction set works - loads of resources for Intel X86 if you have an Intel Mac, still reasonable set for PPC for example Mac OS X Internals.
How to assemble link your programmes - if you have the Developer tools installed you have GCC and associated tools
How to talk to the OS - here is where Mac assembly is a lot less well documented than Windows or Linux. It may be you have to write equivalent C programs and use 'gcc -S' to see what calling/stack restoration conventions are appropriate. It depends what you want to do but at a miniumum you need OS system calls for IO and memory allocation.
A good starting point is here.
If you've got Developer Tools installed, you can simply open Terminal and type as (GNU Assembler - part of Binutils).
For PPC try Lightsoft
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I´m looking forward to learn an assembly language.
I searched web for the tutorial and found different tutorials with different syntax of assembly.
There is any difference between 8086 assembler, nasm and gcc?
What is the better way to learn code with in assembly language?
thanks.
Basically there are two flavours on the x86 chipset which is AT&T or the Intel snytax. Most people I know prefer the Intel syntax because it is much easier to understand, but of course this is also a matter of getting used to. When I learned assembly on 6510 or M68000 I found the AT&T syntax closer related, it is rather confusing with it's adressing modes IMO.
If you instruct gcc to write the assembly sourcefile it uses AT&T syntax by default, but you can switch that to Intel as well using
gcc -S -masm=intel test.c
nasm is an assembler and gcc is a compiler so they have quite different purposes.
As for learning assembly there are lots of tutorials, for example The Art of Assembly. But if you really want to learn it, IMO the best way is to start debug and enter some instructions and see what they are doing and how they change reigsters and flags, writing small loops first.
This way you can focus on the instructions and not fight with the assembler source syntax as well.
I wouldnt start with x86, not a good first instruction set even if you have the hardware. ARM, msp430, avr, and some others are better and have open source simulators where you can get better visibility. I would start small, simply adding or anding a few numbers, write a memory location, read it back, that kind if thing. The simulators (can) prevent you from needing to make system calls to "see" your results, likewise they can definitely help you work through hangs and crashes, which you will get and which IMO leads to giving up on the whole thing. Once you know more, you can switch to hardware or try another instruction set (each new one gets exponentially easier than the prior) leading to x86 if you by then still feel there is a need...With x86 I recommend going back to the early days, find an 8088/86 simulator, learn the original instruction set, then if you still feel the need, then skip to 80386 and newer. You will also need to be able to switch formats in your head, gnu using AT&T was a cardinal sin (gnu assembler folks commit these sins regularly BTW, it is almost expected), but unfortunately we now have these two competing formats. With practice you should easily be able to tell what format is being used on inspection of code, but mentally switching back and forth may still be a challenge.
I'm writing a teaching tutorial to teach university students and programming enthusiasts Compilation concepts on an x86.
I want an IDE tool like WinASM for them to be able to debug their work, but am aware that they may not all run Windows at home.
Is my best choice to target Jasmin? (Or have you got a better suggestion - and why?)
Another approach I've seen is to use a common teaching architecture (such as MIPS) and run it under emulation. For MIPS in particular, there are lots of interactive simulators (like SPIM), as well as full system emulators (like QEMU). The fact that the MIPS architecture is considerably simpler (and less register-starved!) than x86 is definitely a plus as well -- it means you can spend more time focusing on interesting compilation topics, rather than teaching the architecture.
This is another approach (although poor for debugging) - executing assembler inline in C++
A C repl that generates ASM - for learning about the assembler generated.
Also you could just rely on old gdb.
Have you ever considered an online debugging tool? There are a few of them out there. I personally like this asm debugger.
I am a complete newbie to the ARM world. I need to be able to write C code, compile it, and then download into an ARM emulator, and execute. I need to use the GCC 4.1.2 compiler for the C code compilation.
Can anybody point me in the correct directions for the following issues?
What tool chain to use?
What emulator to use?
Are there tutorials or guides on setting up the tool chain?
building a gcc cross compiler yourself is pretty easy. the gcc library and the C library and other things not so much, an embedded library and such a little harder. Depends on how embedded you want to get. I have little use for gcclib or a c library so roll your own works great for me.
After many years of doing this, perhaps it is an age thing, I now just go get the code sourcery tools. the lite version works great. yagarto, devkitarm, winarm or something like that (the site with a zillion examples) all work fine. emdebian also has a good pre-built toolchain. a number of these places if not all have info on how they built their toolchains from gnu sources.
You asked about gcc, but bear in mind that llvm is a strong competitor, and as far as cross compiling goes, since it always cross compiles, it is a far easier cross compiler to download and build and get working than gcc. the recent version is now producing code (for arm) that competes with gcc for performance. gcc is in no way a leader in performance, other compilers I have used run circles around it, but it has been improving with each release (well the 3.x versions sometimes produce better code than the 4.x versions, but you need 4.x for the newer cores and thumb2). even if you go with gcc, try the stable release of llvm from time to time.
qemu is a good emulator, depending on what you are doing the gba emulator virtual gameboy advance is good. There are a couple of nds emulators too. GDB and other places have what appear to be ARMs own armulator. I found it hard to extract and use, so I wrote my own, but being lazy only implemented the thumb instruction set, I called mine the thumbulator. easy to use. Far easier than qemu and armulator to add peripherals to and watch and debug your code. ymmv.
Hmmm I posted a similar answer for someone recently. Google: arm verilog and at umich you will find a file isc.tgz in which is an arm10 behavioural (as in you cannot make a chip from it therefore you can find verilog on the net) model. Which for someone wanting to learn an instruction set, watching your code execute at the gate level is about as good as it gets. Be careful, like a drug, you can get addicted then have a hard time when you go back to silicon where you have relatively zero visibility into your code while it is executing. Somewhere in stackoverflow I posted the steps involved to get that arm10 model and another file or two to turn it into an arm emulator using icarus verilog. gtkwave is a good and free tool for examining the wave (vcd) files.
Above all else you will need the ARM ARM. (The ARM Architectural Reference Manual). Just google it and find it on ARM's web site. There is pseudo code for each instruction teaching you what they do. Use the thumbulator or armulator or others if you need to understand more (mame has an arm core in it too). I make no guarantees that the thumbulator is 100% debugged or accurate, I took some common programs and compared their output to silicon both arm and non-arm to debug the core.
Toolchain you can use Yagarto http://www.yagarto.de/
Emulator you can use Proteus ISIS http://www.labcenter.com/index.cfm
(There is a demo version)
and tutorials, well, google them =)
Good luck!
I am on a Mac with Snow Leopard (10.6.3). I hear that the assembly language I work with has to be valid with the chipset that you use. I am completely new to this I have a basic background in C and Objective-C programming and an almost strong background in PHP. I have always wanted to see what assembly is all about.
The tutorial I'll be looking at is by VTC [link].
What I want to know is: are the tutorials that I'm about to do compatible with the assembly version on the Mac that I have?
I am completely new to this language although I do recall studying some of it way, way back in the day. I do have Xcode and what I'm wondering is what kind of document would I open in Xcode to work with assembly and does the Mac have a built in hex editor (when it comes time to needing it)?
The assembly language you use is not dependent on your OS but rather your CPU's instruction set. Judging by your Mac version, I'd say you are using an Intel processor - so you would want to learn x86 or amd64 assembly.
A good way to pick up assembly is to get yourself an embedded device to play with.
TI has some nice, inexpensive devkits to play with. I've poked around with the Chronos kit ($50) which has digital watch with a programmable MSP430 microcontroller with a wireless link to your computer. It's pretty sweet.
Update: I forgot to mention the Arduino. It's a pretty nifty open platform with tons of interesting peripherals and projects online.
An assembly language is instruction architecture specific. Chips are an instantiation of an instruction architecture.
In my opinion, you are best served by getting TextWrangler and directly compiling with gcc.
The file extension you are looking for is .s.
Assembly, for any processor, will be more or less the same in concept. However, the complexity varies between processors. From what I see in your site, you'd be doing x86 assembler, (x86 being the instruction set all consumer-line Intel processors use, which recent Macs and all PCs use) which can turn out to be fairly complex, but not overwhelming if you learn by steps.
XCode works with plain text files, I believe. Hex Fiend for your hex editing needs, if you come across them.
Do keep in mind, Assembly is extremely low-level. No ifs, whiles, or in fact any control loop save for "do operation and GOTO if results in (not) zero/equal" (unless your assembler provides them as syntactic sugar, which kind of beats the purpose, in my opinion). PHP knowledge will be at most tangentially useful. You C knowledge should serve you well, though.
The linked tutorials look like they use NASM, which is included with Macs. However, system calls are usually different on different platforms (they're very different between Mac and Linux), and without seeing the tutorials, it's hard to know whether they'll target different platforms (I'd guess not, though). A better bet might be to install SPIM and to learn MIPS assembly, which is more straightforward than x86 anyways.
Okay. I want to learn how to assemble programs on my Mac (Early 2009 MBP, Intel Core 2 Duo). So far, I understand only that Assembly languages are comprised of direct one-to-one mnemonics for CPU instructions. After some Googling, I've seen a lot of terms, mostly "x86" and "x86_64". I've also seen MASM, NASM, and GAS, among others.
Correct me if I'm wrong:
x86 and x86_64 are instruction sets. If I write something using these instruction sets (as raw machine code), I'm fine so long as my program stays on the processor it was designed for.
NASM, MASM, and GAS are all different assemblers.
There are different Assembly languages. There's the AT&T syntax and the Intel syntax, for example. Support for these syntaxes differ across assemblers.
Now, questions:
As a Mac user, which instruction sets should I be concerned about?
Xcode uses GCC. Does this mean it also uses GAS?
If it does use GAS, then should I be learning the AT&T syntax?
Is there a book I can get on this. Not a tutorial, not a reference manual on the web. Those things assume to much about me; for example, as far as I know, a register is just a little bit of memory on the CPU. That's how little I really know.
Thanks for your help.
If you want to learn assembly language, start with the x86 instruction set. That's the basic set.
A good book on the subject is Randall Hyde's the Art of Assembly Language, which is also available on his website. He uses a high-level assembler to make things easy to grasp and to get going, but deep down it uses GAS.
I don't believe that XCode comes with any assembler, but you can for example find GAS in MacPort's binutils package.
If you just want to make programs on your Mac and you're not that interested in the life of all the bits in the CPU, you're much better off with a more high-level language like Python or Ruby.
"I'm fine so long as my program stays on the processor it was designed for." Not really. In many cases, assembler programs will also make assumptions about the operating system they run on (e.g. when they call library functions or make system calls). Otherwise, your assumpptions are correct.
Onto questions:
Current Macs support both x86 and x86-64 (aka AMD64 aka EM64T aka Intel64). Both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries can be run on recent systems; Apple itself ships its libraries in "fat" (aka "universal") mode, i.e. machine code for multiple architectures.
Use "as -v" to find out what precise assembler you have; mine reports as "Apple Inc version cctools-698.1~1, GNU assembler version 1.38". So yes, it's GAS.
Yes.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4845/good-x86-assembly-book
I'll answer the first question:
Macs use Intel chips now, and modern processors are 64-bit.