| 1 | NASM TODO list
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| 2 | ==============
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| 3 |
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| 4 | This, like the AUTHORS file, is intended for easy readability by both human
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| 5 | and machine, thus the format.
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| 6 |
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| 7 | F: feature
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| 8 | V: version you should expect it by
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| 9 | R: responsible person or - if unassigned
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| 10 | C: % complete
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| 11 | D: description
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| 12 | D: maybe on multiple lines
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| 13 |
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| 14 | Anything that doesn't start with /^[FVRCD]:/ should be ignored.
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| 15 |
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| 16 | F:-line triggers new entry.
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| 17 | Empty V,R,C assume: V: ?, R: -, C: 0%
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| 18 |
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| 19 | =============
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| 20 |
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| 21 | F: i18n via gettext
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| 22 |
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| 23 | F: Convert shallow code model to deep code model
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| 24 | D: Tired of messing between lots of unrelated files (especially .c/.h stuff)
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| 25 |
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| 26 | F: Automated dependency generation for Makefile
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| 27 | D: Current looks awful and will break if anything changes.
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| 28 |
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| 29 | F: Move output modules out*.c to output/ subdir
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| 30 | R: madfire
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| 31 | C: 10%
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| 32 |
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| 33 | == THESE ARE FROM old NASM's Wishlist
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| 34 | == THEY NEED SEVERE REVISING (seems they weren't updated for a couple of years or so)
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| 35 |
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| 36 | F: Check misc/ide.cfg into RCS as Watcom IDE enhancement thingy
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| 37 | V: 0.98
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| 38 | D: (nop@dlc.fi)
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| 39 |
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| 40 | F: Package the Linux Assembler HOWTO
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| 41 | V: 0.98
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| 42 |
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| 43 | F: 3DNow!, SSE and other extensions need documenting
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| 44 | V: 0.98
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| 45 | D: hpa: Does it really make sense to have a whole instruction set
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| 46 | D: reference packaged with the assembler?
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| 47 |
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| 48 | F: prototypes of lrotate don't match in test/*. Fix.
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| 49 | V: 0.98
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| 50 |
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| 51 | F: Build djgpp binaries for 0.98 onwards. Look into PMODE/W as a stub
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| 52 | V: 0.98
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| 53 | D: it might be a lot better than CWSDPMI. It's in PMW133.ZIP.
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| 54 |
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| 55 | F: %undef operator that goes along with %define
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| 56 | V: ?
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| 57 | C: 100%
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| 58 |
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| 59 | F: Fix `%error' giving error messages twice.
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| 60 | V: 0.99
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| 61 | D: Not especially important, as changes planned for 1.1x below will make
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| 62 | D: the preprocessor be only called once.
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| 63 |
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| 64 | F: Sort out problems with OBJ
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| 65 | V: 0.99
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| 66 | D: * TLINK32 doesn't seem to like SEGDEF32 et al. So for that, we
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| 67 | D: should avoid xxx32 records wherever we can.
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| 68 | D: * However, didn't we change _to_ using xxx32 at some stage? Try
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| 69 | D: to remember why and when.
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| 70 | D: * Apparently Delphi's linker has trouble with two or more
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| 71 | D: globals being defined inside a PUBDEF32. Don't even know if it
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| 72 | D: _can_ cope with a PUBDEF16.
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| 73 | D: * Might need extra flags. *sigh*
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| 74 |
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| 75 | F: Symbol table output may possibly be useful.
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| 76 | V: 0.99
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| 77 | D: Ken Martwick (kenm@efn.org) wants the following format:
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| 78 | D: labelname type offset(hex) repetition count
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| 79 | D: Possibly include xref addresses after repetition count?
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| 80 |
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| 81 | F: ELF fixes
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| 82 | V: 0.99
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| 83 | D: There are various other bugs in outelf.c that make certain kinds
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| 84 | D: of relocation not work. See zbrown.asm. Looks like we may have to do
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| 85 | D: a major rewrite of parts of it. Compare some NASM code output with
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| 86 | D: equivalent GAS code output. Look at the ELF spec. Generally fix things.
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| 87 |
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| 88 | F: ELF fixes
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| 89 | V: 0.99
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| 90 | D: NASM is currently using a kludge in ELF that involves defining
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| 91 | D: a symbol at a zero absolute offset. This isn't needed, as the
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| 92 | D: documented solution to the problem that this solves is to use
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| 93 | D: SHN_UNDEF.
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| 94 |
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| 95 | F: Debug information, in all formats it can be usefully done in.
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| 96 | V: 0.99
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| 97 | D: * including line-number record support.
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| 98 | D: * "George C. Lindauer" <gclind01@starbase.spd.louisville.edu>
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| 99 | D: wants to have some say in how this goes through.
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| 100 | D: * Andrew Crabtree <andrewc@rosemail.rose.hp.com> wants to help out.
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| 101 |
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| 102 | F: Think about a line-continuation character.
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| 103 | V: 0.99
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| 104 |
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| 105 | F: Consider allowing declaration of two labels on the same line,
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| 106 | V: 0.99
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| 107 | D: syntax 'label1[:] label2[:] ... instruction'.
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| 108 | D: Need to investigate feasibility.
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| 109 |
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| 110 | F: Quoting of quotes by doubling them, in string and char constants.
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| 111 | V: 0.99
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| 112 |
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| 113 | F: Two-operand syntax for SEGMENT/SECTION macro to avoid warnings
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| 114 | D: of ignored section parameters on reissue of __SECT__.
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| 115 | D: Or maybe skip the warning if the given parameters are identical to
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| 116 | D: what was actually stored. Investigate.
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| 117 | V: 0.99
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| 118 |
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| 119 | F: Apparently we are not missing a PSRAQ instruction, because it
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| 120 | D: doesn't exist. Check that it doesn't exist as an undocumented
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| 121 | D: instruction, or something stupid like that.
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| 122 | V: 0.99
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| 123 |
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| 124 | F: Any assembled form starting 0x80 can also start 0x82.
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| 125 | V: 1.00
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| 126 | D: ndisasm should know this. New special code in instruction encodings, probably.
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| 127 |
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| 128 | F: Pointing an EQU at an external symbol now generates an error.
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| 129 | V: 1.05
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| 130 | D: There may be a better way of handling this; we should look into it.
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| 131 | D: Ideally, the label mechanism should be changed to cope with one
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| 132 | D: label being declared relative to another - that may work, but could be
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| 133 | D: a pain to implement (or is it? it may be easy enough that you just
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| 134 | D: need to declare a new offset in the same segment...) This should be done
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| 135 | D: before v1.0 is released. There is a comment regarding this in labels.c,
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| 136 | D: towards the end of the file, which discusses ways of fixing this.
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| 137 |
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| 138 | F: nested %rep used to cause a panic.
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| 139 | V: 1.10
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| 140 | D: Now a more informative error message is produced. This problem whould
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| 141 | D: be fixed before v1.0.
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| 142 | D: See comment in switch() statement block for PP_REP in do_directive()
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| 143 | D: in preproc.c (line 1585, or thereabouts)
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| 144 |
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| 145 | F: Contribution
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| 146 | D: zgraeme.tar contains improved hash table routines
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| 147 | D: contributed by Graeme Defty <graeme@HK.Super.NET> for use in the
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| 148 | D: label manager.
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| 149 |
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| 150 | F: Contribution
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| 151 | D: zsyntax.zip contains a syntax-highlighting mode for
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| 152 | D: NASM, for use with the Aurora text editor (??).
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| 153 |
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| 154 | F: Contribution
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| 155 | D: zvim.zip contains a syntax-highlighting mode for NASM, for use with vim.
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| 156 |
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| 157 | F: Contribution
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| 158 | D: zkendal1.zip and zkendal2.zip contain Kendall
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| 159 | D: Bennett's (<KendallB@scitechsoft.com>) alternative syntax stuff,
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| 160 | D: providing an alternative syntax mode for NASM which allows a macro
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| 161 | D: set to be written that allows the same source files to be
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| 162 | D: assembled with NASM and TASM.
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| 163 | R: Kendall Bennett
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| 164 | C: 100%
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| 165 |
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| 166 | F: Add the UD2 instruction.
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| 167 | C: 100%
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| 168 |
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| 169 | F: Add the four instructions documented in 24368901.pdf (Intel's own document).
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| 170 | C: 100%
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| 171 |
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| 172 | F: Some means of avoiding MOV memoffs,EAX which apparently the
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| 173 | D: Pentium pairing detector thinks modifies EAX. Similar means of
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| 174 | D: choosing instruction encodings where necessary.
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| 175 | V: 1.10?
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| 176 |
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| 177 | F: The example of ..@ makes it clear that a ..@ label isn't just
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| 178 | D: local, but doesn't make it clear that it isn't just global either.
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| 179 |
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| 180 | F: hpa wants an evaluator operator for ceil(log2(x)).
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| 181 |
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| 182 | F: Extra reloc types in ELF
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| 183 | D: R_386_16 type 20, PC16 is 21, 8 is 22, PC8 is 23.
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| 184 | D: Add support for the 16s at least.
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| 185 |
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| 186 | F: Lazy section creation or selective section output
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| 187 | D: in COFF/win32 at least and probably other formats: don't bother to emit a section
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| 188 | D: if it contains no data. Particularly the default auto-created
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| 189 | D: section. We believe zero-length sections crash at least WLINK (in win32).
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| 190 |
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| 191 | F: Make the flags field in `struct itemplate' in insns.h a long instead of an int.
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| 192 | C: 100%?
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| 193 |
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| 194 | F: Implement %ifref to check whether a single-line macro has ever been expanded since (last re) definition. Or maybe not. We'll see.
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| 195 |
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| 196 | F: add pointer to \k{insLEAVE} and \k{insENTER} in chapters about mixed-language programming.
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| 197 |
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| 198 | F: Some equivalent to TASM's GLOBAL directive
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| 199 | D: ie something which defines a symbol as external if it doesn't end up being defined
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| 200 | D: but defines it as public if it does end up being defined.
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| 201 |
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| 202 | F: Documentation doesn't explain about C++ name mangling.
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| 203 |
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| 204 | F: see if BITS can be made to do anything sensible in obj (eg set the default new-segment property to Use32).
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| 205 |
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| 206 | F: OBJ: coalesce consecutive offset and segment fixups for the same location into full-32bit-pointer fixups.
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| 207 | D: This is apparently necessary because some twazzock in the PowerBASIC development
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| 208 | D: team didn't design to support the OMF spec the way the rest of the
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| 209 | D: world sees it.
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| 210 |
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| 211 | F: Allow % to be separated from the rest of a preproc directive, for alternative directive indentation styles.
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| 212 |
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| 213 | F: __DATE__, __TIME__, and text variants of __NASM_MAJOR__ and __NASM_MINOR__.
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| 214 |
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| 215 | F: Warn on TIMES combined with multi-line macros.
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| 216 | V: 1.00
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| 217 | D: TIMES gets applied to first line only - should bring to users' attention.
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| 218 |
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| 219 | F: Re-work the evaluator, again, with a per-object-format fixup
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| 220 | D: routine, so as to be able to cope with section offsets "really"
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| 221 | D: being pure numbers; should be able to allow at _least_ the two
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| 222 | D: common idioms
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| 223 | D: TIMES 510-$ DB 0 ; bootsector
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| 224 | D: MOV AX,(PROG_END-100H)/16 ; .COM TSR
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| 225 | D: Would need to call the fixup throughout the evaluator, and the
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| 226 | D: fixup would have to be allowed to return UNKNOWN on pass one if it
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| 227 | D: had to. (_Always_ returning UNKNOWN on pass one, though a lovely
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| 228 | D: clean design, breaks the first of the above examples.)
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| 229 | V: 1.10
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| 230 |
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| 231 | F: Preprocessor identifier concatenation?
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| 232 | V: 1.10
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| 233 |
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| 234 | F: Arbitrary section names in `bin'.
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| 235 | V: 0.98.09
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| 236 | D: Is this necessary? Is it even desirable?
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| 237 | D: hpa: Desirable, yes. Necessary? Probably not, but there are definitely cases where it becomes quite useful.
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| 238 | R: madfire
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| 239 | C: 100%
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| 240 |
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| 241 | F: Ability to read from a pipe.
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| 242 | V: 1.10
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| 243 | D: Obviously not useful under dos, so memory problems with storing
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| 244 | D: entire input file aren't a problem either.
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| 245 |
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| 246 | F: File caching under DOS/32 bit...
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| 247 | V: 1.10?
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| 248 | D: maybe even implement discardable buffers that get thrown away
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| 249 | D: when we get a NULL returned from malloc(). Only really useful under
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| 250 | D: DOS. Think about it.
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| 251 |
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| 252 | F: possibly spool out the pre-processed stuff to a file, to avoid having to re-process it.
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| 253 | V: 1.10?
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| 254 | D: Possible problems with preprocessor values not known on pass 1? Have a look...
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| 255 |
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| 256 | F: Or maybe we can spool out a pre-parsed version...?
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| 257 | V: 1.10
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| 258 | D: Need to investigate feasibility. Does the results from the parser
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| 259 | D: change from pass 1 to pass 2? Would it be feasible to alter it so that
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| 260 | D: the parser returns an invariant result, and this is then processed
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| 261 | D: afterwards to resolve label references, etc?
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| 262 |
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| 263 | F: Subsection support?
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| 264 |
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| 265 | F: A good ALIGN mechanism, similar to GAS's.
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| 266 | V: 0.98p1
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| 267 | D: GAS pads out space by means of the following (32-bit) instructions:
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| 268 | D: 8DB42600000000 lea esi,[esi+0x0]
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| 269 | D: 8DB600000000 lea esi,[esi+0x0]
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| 270 | D: 8D742600 lea esi,[esi+0x0]
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| 271 | D: 8D7600 lea esi,[esi+0x0]
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| 272 | D: 8D36 lea esi,[esi]
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| 273 | D: 90 nop
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| 274 | D: It uses up to two of these instructions to do up to 14-byte pads;
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| 275 | D: when more than 14 bytes are needed, it issues a (short) jump to
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| 276 | D: the end of the padded section and then NOPs the rest. Come up with
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| 277 | D: a similar scheme for 16 bit mode, and also come up with a way to
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| 278 | D: use it - internal to the assembler, so that programs using ALIGN
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| 279 | D: don't knock over preprocess-only mode.
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| 280 | D: Also re-work the macro form so that when given one argument in a
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| 281 | D: code section it calls this feature.
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| 282 | R: Panos Minos
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| 283 | C: 100%?
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| 284 |
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| 285 | F: Possibly a means whereby FP constants can be specified as immediate operands to non-FP instructions.
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| 286 | D: * Possible syntax: MOV EAX,FLOAT 1.2 to get a single-precision FP
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| 287 | D: constant. Then maybe MOV EAX,HI_FLOAT 1.2 and MOV EAX,LO_FLOAT
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| 288 | D: 1.2 to get the two halves of a double-precision one. Best to
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| 289 | D: ignore extended-precision in case it bites.
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| 290 | D: * Alternatively, maybe MOV EAX,FLOAT(4,0-4,1.2) to get bytes 0-4
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| 291 | D: (ie 0-3) of a 4-byte constant. Then HI_FLOAT is FLOAT(8,4-8,x)
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| 292 | D: and LO_FLOAT is FLOAT(8,0-4,x). But this version allows two-byte
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| 293 | D: chunks, one-byte chunks, even stranger chunks, and pieces of
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| 294 | D: ten-byte reals to be bandied around as well.
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| 295 |
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| 296 | F: A UNION macro might be quite cool
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| 297 | D: now that ABSOLUTE is sane enough to be able to handle it.
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| 298 |
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| 299 | F: An equivalent to gcc's ## stringify operator, plus string concatenation
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| 300 | D: somehow implemented without undue ugliness, so as
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| 301 | D: to be able to do `%include "/my/path/%1"' in a macro, or something
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| 302 | D: similar...
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| 303 |
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| 304 | F: Actually _do_ something with the processor, privileged and
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| 305 | D: undocumented flags in the instruction table. When this happens,
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| 306 | D: consider allowing PMULHRW to map to either of the Cyrix or AMD
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| 307 | D: versions?
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| 308 | D: hpa: The -p option to ndisasm now uses this to some extent.
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| 309 | V: 1.10
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| 310 |
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| 311 | F: Maybe NEC V20/V30 instructions? ?
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| 312 | D: hpa: What are they? Should be trivial to implement.
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| 313 |
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| 314 | F: Yet more object formats.
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| 315 | D: * Possibly direct support for .EXE files?
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| 316 | V: 1.10
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| 317 |
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| 318 | F: Symbol map in binary format. Format-specific options...
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| 319 | V: 1.10?
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| 320 |
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| 321 | F: REDESIGN: Think about EQU dependency, and about start-point specification in OBJ. Possibly re-think directive support.
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| 322 | V: 1.20?
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| 323 |
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| 324 | F: Think about a wrapper program like gcc?
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| 325 | V: 2.00?
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| 326 | D: Possibly invent a _patch_ for gcc so that it can take .asm files on the command line?
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| 327 | D: If a wrapper happens, think about adding an option to cause the
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| 328 | D: resulting executable file to be executed immediately, thus
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| 329 | D: allowing NASM source files to have #!... (probably silly)
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| 330 |
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| 331 | F: Multi-platform support?
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| 332 | D: If so: definitely Alpha; possibly Java byte code;
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| 333 | D: probably ARM/StrongARM; maybe Sparc; maybe Mips; maybe
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| 334 | D: Vax. Perhaps Z80 and 6502, just for a laugh?
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| 335 |
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| 336 | F: Consider a 'verbose' option that prints information about the resulting object file onto stdout.
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| 337 |
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| 338 | F: Line numbers in the .lst file don't match the line numbers in the input.
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| 339 | D: They probably should, rather than the current matching of the post-preprocessor line numbers.
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| 340 |
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