Re: HLA and embedded controllers


vid512@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Randy: you would also need to rewrite your library

Actually, I am doing that right now. The HLA stdlib v2.x will probably
start appearing within a month or so. There are a couple of reasons
I'm rewriting the library (though this has nothihng to do with
supporting microcontrollers); in order of priority:

1) Separating out the OS-dependent functions to make it easier to port
the library to another OS.
2) Make the library more efficient.
3) Make the library available to other assembler users, not just HLA.
4) Cleaning up the code, doing as much work in pure assembly as is
reasonable (so no one can complain that it isn't "assembly language",
particularly users of other assemblers).

Of course, none of this would help with the creation of an HLA-like
assembler for other CPUs. Do keep in mind, however, that I do not
consider the HLA standard library to be part of the HLA language. That
is, you could easily create an HLA-like language for a microcontroller
and not supply a "standard library" for it at all. Indeed, for most
microcontrollers I'd be loathe to try and provide a general-purpose
library because space and speed limitations on the low-end chips makes
the design and usage of a general-purpose library difficult. Even
people using C on those (low-end) chips rarely make use of any
"standard library" routines in their programs.

Of course, on higher-end chips, it's a different story...

All that being said, however, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to
create an HLA-like assembler for embedded CPUs. There are 1,000 times
as many x86 programmers who work in assembly language (now and then)
than there are assembly programmers for all the other CPUs put
together. Given that the market for an x86 assembler is rather small,
one would have to be *really* dedicated to spend the time writing an
HLA-like assembler (which is a *lot* of work) for some other CPU. I am
not that dedicated :-). As I've said, however, if there is an
individual out there who wants to do this, I'll be more than happy to
provide my source code to HLA v2.0 (once the port to FreeBSD is
complete) which handles all the really hard stuff for doing an HLA-like
assembler.

BTW, it's not HLA-like, but Roger Taylor has written a 6809 assembler
using HLA.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

.

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