Amiga Assembly extension for Visual Studio Code

[Hannibal]

Yeah, it is understandable that the debugging exe is bigger due to extra debug info, but that wouldn’t affect the actual code in the executable, I just didn’t think the emulator itself would run that much slower.

Sounds good that you are pushing for this to be in a WinUAE fork also - I have no allegiance to neither FS-UAE nor WinUAE, I just use whatever gets the job done :-) and I will happily wait if this is the first step before trying to optimize this.

Thanks for the reply

[prb28]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

Yeah, it is understandable that the debugging exe is bigger due to extra debug info, but that wouldn’t affect the actual code in the executable, I just didn’t think the emulator itself would run that much slower.

You're right, I think it's the debugging code of FS-UAE that make it slower. I don't know if it is the remote protocol addition or the core debug functions that must be optimized.



The choice of winuae is more to enter in a classic merging path from winuae to fs-uae and getting an IDE agnostic remote protocol useful in the future.



If you are interested, I'll certainly make a test release to get some feedback (sometime in the future).


I'll tell you if it is faster, next time I run it on winuae ;-).

[Hannibal]

I have one small bug report:
I couldn't place breakpoints in my code. Similar symptoms to github issue #115. I verified that my paths in the debug executable were actually absolute (as recommended), however, they contained ".." to go to parent path. For example: c:\code\source\mycode.s looked fine but c:\code\source\..\includes\musicplayer.i didn't. For me this was something that either VAsm or VLink put in.
I wonder if this is something you could make your extension deal with? It's technically not wrong for VAsm to leave the paths unflattened, though it is a waste of bytes, so it would be better if your debug info loader cleans the paths

I personally worked around it, but thought you would want to know. It also makes me wonder if the plugin deals properly with upper/lower case inconsistencies in file paths, but I didn't test that.

[prb28]

Originally Posted by Hannibal

I wonder if this is something you could make your extension deal with?

I must look at it, I think it's from the include mechanism of vasm. I'll add a feature issue in github to remember it when I'll get my head out of winuae.

Originally Posted by Hannibal

It also makes me wonder if the plugin deals properly with upper/lower case inconsistencies in file paths

Well... Yes and no, there are some workaround in the extension but vscode had some issues on windows with case sensitivity.

[defor]

Amiga-Assembly is such a great tool. Thank you prb28 for it!
Honestly, I think I wouldn't return to Amiga coding without it. After 20 years long break, for me, it was too intimidating to code in ASMOne back again as I am too much accustomed to other IDEs and editors. To sit down by my computer after work, start VSCode with your addon, write in 68k assembler and easily test it in FS-UAE is such a pleasure! Thank you!
P.S.: Sorry for spamming this thread. I just had to write it.

[prb28]

Originally Posted by defor

Amiga-Assembly is such a great tool. Thank you prb28 for it!

Thanks !

[Hannibal]

By the way, I worked with Frank Wille to add a new feature into the next version of vasm, which will make source-level debugging even more useful (at least useful for me) - make it optional per macro if the source-level debug information should point at the instructions of the macro or the parent line+file where the macro was invoked.

This is extremely useful if you use a ton of small macros, and you really care about following the flow of the larger functions using the macros, rather than each instruction inside the macro. On the other hand, for the larger or more important macros you may want to debug into the macros.


This is controlled using a new directive, msource on/msource off, which you would wrap around the macros you want to show the parent line+file.

Know that stepping in the debugger only steps an assembly instruction, not to a new source line. I like the way it works, but I found it useful to also look at the disassembly window in parallel, so I can watch what is going on.


I may start another thread to share some of the macros I use, but i found this useful for a lot of cases, such as
* beginfunc/endfunc - i write all my assembly code within these functions macros, adn they can do certain checks at beginning/end of every function. But I never care about debugging into the checks - i care about the actual function, and want to be able to set breakpoints on each function rather than on the beginfunc macro.
* push <registerlist>/pop - macros for pushing register to the stack, and a macro for popping - pop doesn't need a list of registers, so it will always match up with the push. And it will fail to compile if pushes and pops don't match up inside functions
* assert - creates an infinite loop that flashes the screen. If I stop the debugger I see the source file that triggered the assert, not the assert flashing code.
* waitblit
Plus I made a simple scripting language using macros, and it is amazing to be able to put breakpoints on specific lines rather than in the underlying macros.

[prb28]

Really interesting!
For the stepping, having a step over step into for the macros or step until line could be interesting to add.

[Quagliarulo]

Is there anything similar for people who don't use Windows and Visual Studio?

[prb28]

Originally Posted by Quagliarulo

Is there anything similar for people who don't use Windows and Visual Studio?

Well, it works on Linux and osx and it uses visual studio code (not visual studio) that runs on these platforms too.
Alternatively you can use the bebbo’s debugging tools with eclipse and gcc.

[Antiriad_UK]

It’s not visual studio by the way. It’s visual studio code which is a free lightweight editor.

[mr.spiv]

Been playing around with this nice extension (using OSX).. Any idea what's causing probs when trying to run the fs-uae with gdbstub I always get a popup "Unable toi load segments" and the debugging as-is does not work.

[prb28]

Originally Posted by mr.spiv

Been playing around with this nice extension (using OSX).. Any idea what's causing probs when trying to run the fs-uae with gdbstub I always get a popup "Unable toi load segments" and the debugging as-is does not work.

Does it work with the example workspace ?
https://github.com/prb28/vscode-amig...xample-osx.zip

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by prb28

Does it work with the example workspace ?
https://github.com/prb28/vscode-amig...xample-osx.zip

Works like a charm.. hmm, then there's something goofy on my self setup Gotta have a closer look.

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by mr.spiv

Works like a charm.. hmm, then there's something goofy on my self setup Gotta have a closer look.

I had the build & launch etc tweaked in a way that the final exe was located at ${fs-uae}/hd0/c not on the root of ${fs-uae}/hd0. That caused the debugger to err.

[prb28]

Originally Posted by mr.spiv

I had the build & launch etc tweaked in a way that the final exe was located at ${fs-uae}/hd0/c not on the root of ${fs-uae}/hd0. That caused the debugger to err.

Maybe I need some "file not found error".

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by prb28

Maybe I need some "file not found error".

It does find a file and run it in the fs-uae.. debugging just does not work.

[TRoNi]

Lovely extension, prb28, but one question.

Is it possible to have multiple winuae debug configurations, so I can debug into an A500 or A1200? I tried to modify the configuration, but I got nothing.

Thanks

[prb28]

Originally Posted by TRoNi

Is it possible to have multiple winuae debug configurations, so I can debug into an A500 or A1200? I tried to modify the configuration, but I got nothing.

Two elements are used for the configuration :

* the file : bin\default.uae
* the file : .vscode\launch.json
I think you can remove the option "quickstart=a500,1" from the default.uae file and create two different launch configuration with this parameter using a500 or a1200 value.

[JoeJoe]

I have simple create several configs with WinUAE. With the follow option in the launch.json select them:

          "options": [
            "-config=A600.uae",
            "-s",
            "debugging_features=gdbserver",
            "...