Re: nasm over gas?

["Richard B. Johnson" <root@chaos.analogic.com>]

On Thu, 4 Sep 2003, Yann Droneaud wrote:

> fruhwirth clemens wrote:
>
> > Hi!
> >
> > I recently posted a module for twofish which implements the algorithm in
> > assembler (http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=106210815132365&w=2)
> >
> > Unfortunately the assembler used is masm. I'd like to change that. Netwide
> > Assembler (nasm) is the assembler of my choice since it focuses on
> > portablity and has a more powerful macro facility (macros are heavily used
> > by 2fish_86.asm). But as I'd like to make my work useful (aim for an
> > inclusion in the kernel) I noticed that this would be the first module to
> > depend on nasm. Everything else uses gas.
> >
> > So the question is: Is a patch which depends on nasm likely to be merged?
> >
>
> I hope no ...
>
> Some years ago, we converted the only part of the kernel that used as86
> to GNU as: see arch/i386/boot. I think this was an improvement.
> Using nasm for only one small piece of code would be a regression, imho.
>
> Regards.
>
> PS: GCC pass .S assembler source files through cpp, so you get macros
> expanding.
>

GAS also has macro capability. It's just "strange". However, it
does everything MASM (/ducks/) can do. It's just strange, backwards, etc.
It takes some getting used to.

If you decide to use gcc as a preprocessor, you can't use comments,
NotGood(tm) because the "#" and some stuff after it gets "interpreted"
by cpp.

Cheers,
Dick Johnson
Penguin : Linux version 2.4.22 on an i686 machine (794.73 BogoMips).
            Note 96.31% of all statistics are fiction.