xkas-plus : another HuC6280 assembler

[elmer]

Looks like it's been available for a few months, but I only just saw it mentioned on RomHacking.

It doesn't look like it's got macros, but the "table" handling for SJIS (or whatever) conversion sounds interesting.

github.com/devinacker/xkas-plus
romhacking.net/forum/?topic=19640

[TurboXray]

I think I remember redcomet working on this. Xkas is popular with the hacking crowd IIRC. But.. no macros is a deal breaker for me. I have a custom 68k-ish macro set that I love using with PCE stuffs (as well as vdc macros that are beautiful to look at).

 One of the best assemblers I've ever worked with is AS. Although it supports a bauhgazillion processors - sadly 6280 is not one of them. This is my go to for 68k stuffs (snasm68k is ok for small stuffs, and GNU assembler syntax sucks arse for 68k. I hate it!).

 Edit: Whoops. Wrong link.

[elmer]

I think I remember redcomet working on this. Xkas is popular with the hacking crowd IIRC. But.. no macros is a deal breaker for me.

Me, too. It seemed weird that a modern assembler wouldn't support them, so I took another look at the documentation.

Yep, it does have macros  ... they're documented in the original xkas project before it was forked for xkas-plus.

I have a custom 68k-ish macro set that I love using with PCE stuffs (as well as vdc macros that are beautiful to look at).

Is it rude to ask if you'd be willing to share? 
 

This is my go to for 68k stuffs (snasm68k is ok for small stuffs, and GNU assembler syntax sucks arse for 68k. I hate it!).

I've not AS ... I'll have to take a look. 

I've always heard bad things about the GNU assembler ... but it seemed OK when I used it for small-scale V810 assembly on Zeroigar. Now that you can pass your assembly source through the C pre-processor, it's even got macros.

But I've no idea how horrible its 68000 syntax is.

As for snasm68k ... well ... I can only say that one heck of a lot of commercial Amiga, ST, and Genesis games were written with it.

In its day, it was the best-of-the-best. That day may well have passed a long time ago, though.

When it came to 5th-gen machines, Snasm (i.e. Cross Products) lost a lot of developer sales to PsyQ (their C debugger was miles better).

[Arkhan Asylum]

Elmer, did you use this much in the past monthish or so?   I was mostly curious how it compares to simply sticking with PCEAS. 

PCEAS was never exactly awful.   It's HuC that sucks a bit (lot) for things.

[elmer]

Elmer, did you use this much in the past monthish or so?   I was mostly curious how it compares to simply sticking with PCEAS.

I thought about it, but decided that it would be wiser to stick with PCEAS for the Xanadu hacking, because it is known to work.

Since PCEAS is doing everything that I need for the hacking right now, there's not much reason for me to try xkas.

CA65 is definitely the "future" for me.

I've been using CC65/CA65 for my PCE experiments, such as the TED2 investigations, and am loving the flexibility of having a linker again.