From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Joel Sherrill To: Doug Evans Cc: gas2@cygnus.com Subject: Re: other apps that assemble code Date: Thu, 05 Feb 1998 10:49:00 -0000 Message-id: References: <199802051756.JAA28237@canuck.cygnus.com.> X-SW-Source: 1998/msg00033.html On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Doug Evans wrote: > Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 11:47:36 -0600 (CST) > From: Joel Sherrill > > I have seen articles about "optimizing assemblers" for really smart cpus > which insert nops, reorder instructions to avoid stalls, reassign > registers, etc. This type of tools would benefit from a generic assembly > language parser. > > Ok, but methinks this is still just GAS. > Or am I misunderstanding something? I guess it could be but would it be cleaner to have it as a separate tool which manipulated source. Technically either approach is viable. >From an implementation standpoint, having a separate tool might make that tool easier to update/port. From a strict viewpoint, gas shoud only take assembler and generate object. That is a difficult enough process as it is. Having to deal with possible code reordering, nops could only make gas more complex and difficult to maintain. I don't know much about gas internals. Does it have an internal representation which could be manipulated like this? -joel