Building on WIn2K

[Torbjorn Granlund]

"Brian Gladman" <brg@gladman.plus.com> writes:

  Moreover, gas is really only a backend for gcc and does not
  have the facilities that are really needed for doing decent
  assembler code development work. In contrast NASM is a good
  assembler with all the facilities needed for this.

Clearly, NASM does not have "all the facilities needed for this",
i.e., assembling GMP's code.  :-)

  Hence although the conversion is a bit of a chore, once I have
  done this I do at least have code that is much easier to work
  with and improve.

Well, working with the m4 unrolled output should be a nightmare,
I think.

  Nevertheless it is a chore so I only convert what I need even though I get
  emails asking me to do the rest.

I think it is always a mistake to duplicate lots of code.  The
.asm files in GMP, and the filtering using m4, are designed with
portability in mind, without creating redundancy.

I am afraid we will never accept translated code that can be fed
into some ever so good MS assembly.  If people feel a strong urge
to use that assembler for GMP's code, then somebody should write
a tool taking m4 output and rearranging the operands.  Such a
tool could perhaps be integrated in GMP.

--
Torbjörn