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doc: remove obsolete and, quite frankly, condecending information

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Remove some highly obsolete and, quite frankly, condecending
introductory content.  For most users, downloading and especially
compiling is no longer an immediate issue, so move that information to
an appendix.

Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@linux.intel.com>
This commit is contained in:
H. Peter Anvin 2017-04-14 00:35:33 -07:00
parent 2760e76ef9
commit 322401fcbc
1 changed files with 75 additions and 149 deletions
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doc/nasmdoc.src
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@ -214,6 +214,8 @@ convention
\IR{nan} NaN
\IR{nasm version} NASM version
\IR{netbsd} NetBSD
\IR{nsis} NSIS
\IR{nullsoft scriptable installer} Nullsoft Scriptable Installer
\IR{omf} OMF
\IR{openbsd} OpenBSD
\IR{operating system} operating system
@ -293,50 +295,15 @@ Object File Format
The Netwide Assembler, NASM, is an 80x86 and x86-64 assembler designed
for portability and modularity. It supports a range of object file
formats, including Linux and \c{*BSD} \c{a.out}, \c{ELF}, \c{COFF},
\c{Mach-O}, Microsoft 16-bit \c{OBJ}, \c{Win32} and \c{Win64}. It will
also output plain binary files. Its syntax is designed to be simple
and easy to understand, similar to Intel's but less complex. It
supports all currently known x86 architectural extensions, and has
strong support for macros.
\S{yaasm} Why Yet Another Assembler?
The Netwide Assembler grew out of an idea on \i\c{comp.lang.asm.x86}
(or possibly \i\c{alt.lang.asm} - I forget which), which was
essentially that there didn't seem to be a good \e{free} x86-series
assembler around, and that maybe someone ought to write one.
\b \i\c{a86} is good, but not free, and in particular you don't get any
32-bit capability until you pay. It's DOS only, too.
\b \i\c{gas} is free, and ports over to DOS and Unix, but it's not
very good, since it's designed to be a back end to \i\c{gcc}, which
always feeds it correct code. So its error checking is minimal. Also,
its syntax is horrible, from the point of view of anyone trying to
actually \e{write} anything in it. Plus you can't write 16-bit code in
it (properly.)
\b \i\c{as86} is specific to Minix and Linux, and (my version at least)
doesn't seem to have much (or any) documentation.
\b \i\c{MASM} isn't very good, and it's (was) expensive, and it runs only under
DOS.
\b \i\c{TASM} is better, but still strives for MASM compatibility,
which means millions of directives and tons of red tape. And its syntax
is essentially MASM's, with the contradictions and quirks that
entails (although it sorts out some of those by means of Ideal mode.)
It's expensive too. And it's DOS-only.
So here, for your coding pleasure, is NASM. At present it's
still in prototype stage - we don't promise that it can outperform
any of these assemblers. But please, \e{please} send us bug reports,
fixes, helpful information, and anything else you can get your hands
on (and thanks to the many people who've done this already! You all
know who you are), and we'll improve it out of all recognition.
Again.
\c{Mach-O}, 16-bit and 32-bit \c{OBJ} (OMF) format, \c{Win32} and
\c{Win64}. It will also output plain binary files, Intel hex and
Motorola S-Record formats. Its syntax is designed to be simple and
easy to understand, similar to the syntax in the Intel Software
Developer Manual with minimal complexity. It supports all currently
known x86 architectural extensions, and has strong support for macros.
NASM also comes with a set of utilities for handling the \c{RDOFF}
custom object-file format.
\S{legal} \i{License} Conditions
@ -357,7 +324,7 @@ notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
\b Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND
CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
@ -372,97 +339,6 @@ CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR
OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE,
EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
\H{contact} Contact Information
The current version of NASM (since about 0.98.08) is maintained by a
team of developers, accessible through the \c{nasm-devel} mailing list
(see below for the link).
If you want to report a bug, please read \k{bugs} first.
NASM has a \i{website} at
\W{http://www.nasm.us/}\c{http://www.nasm.us/}. If it's not there,
google for us!
\i{New releases}, \i{release candidates}, and \I{snapshots, daily
development}\i{daily development snapshots} of NASM are available from
the official web site.
If you want information about the current development status, please
subscribe to the \i\c{nasm-devel} email list; see link from the
website.
\H{install} Installation
\S{instdos} \i{Installing} NASM under MS-\i{DOS} or Windows
Once you've obtained the appropriate archive for NASM,
\i\c{nasm-XXX-dos.zip} or \i\c{nasm-XXX-win32.zip} (where \c{XXX}
denotes the version number of NASM contained in the archive), unpack
it into its own directory (for example \c{c:\\nasm}).
The archive will contain a set of executable files: the NASM
executable file \i\c{nasm.exe}, the NDISASM executable file
\i\c{ndisasm.exe}, and possibly additional utilities to handle the
RDOFF file format.
The only file NASM needs to run is its own executable, so copy
\c{nasm.exe} to a directory on your PATH, or alternatively edit
\i\c{autoexec.bat} to add the \c{nasm} directory to your
\i\c{PATH} (to do that under Windows XP, go to Start > Control Panel >
System > Advanced > Environment Variables; these instructions may work
under other versions of Windows as well.)
That's it - NASM is installed. You don't need the nasm directory
to be present to run NASM (unless you've added it to your \c{PATH}),
so you can delete it if you need to save space; however, you may
want to keep the documentation or test programs.
If you've downloaded the \i{DOS source archive}, \i\c{nasm-XXX.zip},
the \c{nasm} directory will also contain the full NASM \i{source
code}, and a selection of \i{Makefiles} you can (hopefully) use to
rebuild your copy of NASM from scratch. See the file \c{INSTALL} in
the source archive.
Note that a number of files are generated from other files by Perl
scripts. Although the NASM source distribution includes these
generated files, you will need to rebuild them (and hence, will need a
Perl interpreter) if you change insns.dat, standard.mac or the
documentation. It is possible future source distributions may not
include these files at all. Ports of \i{Perl} for a variety of
platforms, including DOS and Windows, are available from
\W{http://www.cpan.org/ports/}\i{www.cpan.org}.
\S{instdos} Installing NASM under \i{Unix}
Once you've obtained the \i{Unix source archive} for NASM,
\i\c{nasm-XXX.tar.gz} (where \c{XXX} denotes the version number of
NASM contained in the archive), unpack it into a directory such
as \c{/usr/local/src}. The archive, when unpacked, will create its
own subdirectory \c{nasm-XXX}.
NASM is an \I{Autoconf}\I\c{configure}auto-configuring package: once
you've unpacked it, \c{cd} to the directory it's been unpacked into
and type \c{./configure}. This shell script will find the best C
compiler to use for building NASM and set up \i{Makefiles}
accordingly.
Once NASM has auto-configured, you can type \i\c{make} to build the
\c{nasm} and \c{ndisasm} binaries, and then \c{make install} to
install them in \c{/usr/local/bin} and install the \i{man pages}
\i\c{nasm.1} and \i\c{ndisasm.1} in \c{/usr/local/man/man1}.
Alternatively, you can give options such as \c{--prefix} to the
configure script (see the file \i\c{INSTALL} for more details), or
install the programs yourself.
NASM also comes with a set of utilities for handling the \c{RDOFF}
custom object-file format, which are in the \i\c{rdoff} subdirectory
of the NASM archive. You can build these with \c{make rdf} and
install them with \c{make rdf_install}, if you want them.
\C{running} Running NASM
\H{syntax} NASM \i{Command-Line} Syntax
@ -993,8 +869,9 @@ Thus, \c{-w+all} enables all available warnings, and \c{-w-all}
disables warnings entirely (since NASM 2.13).
Since version 2.00, NASM has also supported the gcc-like syntax
\c{-Wwarning-class} and \c{-Wno-warning-class} instead of \c{-w+warning-class} and
\c{-w-warning-class}, respectively; both syntaxes work identically.
\c{-Wwarning-class} and \c{-Wno-warning-class} instead of
\c{-w+warning-class} and \c{-w-warning-class}, respectively; both
syntaxes work identically.
The option \c{-w+error} or \i\c{-Werror} can be used to treat warnings
as errors. This can be controlled on a per warning class basis
@ -1350,7 +1227,7 @@ For example:
\c wordvar: resw 1 ; reserve a word
\c realarray resq 10 ; array of ten reals
\c ymmval: resy 1 ; one YMM register
\c zmmvals: resz 32 ; 32 ZMM registers
\c zmmvals: resz 32 ; 32 ZMM registers
\S{incbin} \i\c{INCBIN}: Including External \i{Binary Files}
@ -4329,7 +4206,7 @@ This packages contains the following floating-point convenience macros:
\c %define NaN __QNaN__
\c %define QNaN __QNaN__
\c %define SNaN __SNaN__
\c
\c
\c %define float8(x) __float8__(x)
\c %define float16(x) __float16__(x)
\c %define float32(x) __float32__(x)
@ -5968,8 +5845,8 @@ causes the linker to build an entry \e{in} the GOT containing the
offset of the symbol within the TLS block, so you can access the value
of the symbol with code such as:
\c mov eax,[tid wrt ..tlsie]
\c mov [gs:eax],ebx
\c mov eax,[tid wrt ..tlsie]
\c mov [gs:eax],ebx
\b In ELF64 or ELFx32 mode, referring to an external or global symbol using
@ -5978,7 +5855,7 @@ causes the linker to build an entry \e{in} the GOT containing the
offset of the symbol within the TLS block, so you can access the value
of the symbol with code such as:
\c mov rax,[rel tid wrt ..gottpoff]
\c mov rax,[rel tid wrt ..gottpoff]
\c mov rcx,[fs:rax]
@ -8150,13 +8027,6 @@ not understand \c{DOS .EXE} files like \c{debug} will. It just
disassembles.
\H{ndisstart} Getting Started: Installation
See \k{install} for installation instructions. NDISASM, like NASM,
has a \c{man page} which you may want to put somewhere useful, if you
are on a Unix system.
\H{ndisrun} Running NDISASM
To disassemble a file, you will typically use a command of the form
@ -8329,3 +8199,59 @@ column shows the processor type in which the instruction was introduced and,
\A{changelog} \i{NASM Version History}
\& changes.src
\A{contact} Compiling and Contact Information
\H{website} Where to Get NASM and How to Contact Us
NASM has a \i{website} at
\W{http://www.nasm.us/}\c{http://www.nasm.us/}.
\i{New releases}, \i{release candidates}, and \I{snapshots, daily
development}\i{daily development snapshots} of NASM are available from
the official web site in source form as well as binaries for a number
of common platforms.
If you want information about the current development status or
participate in the development, please subscribe to the
\i\c{nasm-devel} email list; see link from the website.
To report bugs in NASM, please file a bug report in the bug tracker on
our website.
\H{source} Building NASM from Source
The source archives available on the web site should be capable of
building on a number of platforms. On a system which has Unix shell,
run:
\c ./configure
\c make everything
A number of options can be passed to \c{./configure}; see
\c{./configure --help}.
A set of Makefiles for some other environments are also available;
please see the file \c{Mkfiles/README}.
To build the installer for the Windows platform, you will need the
\i\e{Nullsoft Scriptable Installer}, \i{NSIS}, installed.
To build the documentation, you will need a set of additional tools.
The documentation is not likely to be able to build on non-Unix
systems.
\H{git} Building NASM from the \i\c{git} Repository
The NASM development tree is kept in a source code repository using
the \c{git} distributed source control system. The link is available
on the website.
To build NASM from the \c{git} repository you will need a Perl and, if
building on a Unix system, GNU autoconf.
To build on a Unix system, run:
\c ./autogen.sh
to create the \c{configure} script and then build as listed above.