vasm: Empty Macro issue

[VladR]

I'm porting a lot of code compiled by smac (I believe that's the madmac syntax originally) and I'm using these two macros for the folding of blocks inside Notepad++, which doesn't work in vasm:

.macro FoldStart
.endm
.macro FoldEnd
.endm

And this is how it's used in the source:

FoldStart ; wait_for_gpu_to_finish
wait_for_gpu_to_finish:
 .wait_gpu:
  cmp.l #DSP_DONE, gpuState
 bne .wait_gpu
 rts
FoldEnd

This allows the code sections to be neatly folded (into a single line showing only "FoldStart ; wait_for_gpu_to_finish") and opened up only when needed, which is a great way how to organize hundred thousands lines of code (without having to switch between lots of files).


This is the Windows vasm build:

vasm 1.8d (c) in 2002-2018 Volker Barthelmann
vasm M68k/CPU32/ColdFire cpu backend 2.3b (c) 2002-2017 Frank Wille
vasm motorola syntax module 3.11c (c) 2002-2018 Frank Wille
vasm hunk format output module 2.9b (c) 2002-2017 Frank Wille

And this is the full command line:

vasm -m68020 -Fhunkexe -o gt.exe  gt.asm

I can get only ONE pair of FoldStart/FoldEnd compiled. The second barfs out this:

 
error 75 in line 73 of "gt.asm": label <FoldStart> redefined
>FoldStart
error 75 in line 82 of "gt.asm": label <FoldEnd> redefined
>FoldEnd

So, it appears it actually creates a label ? From looking into the MOT syntax it appears it is, indeed, possible to define the label without using the ":".


This is how it's currently defined in code

 
FoldStart macro
    
    endm
FoldEnd macro
  
  endm

- I tried temporarily putting a NOP inside to make sure it's not the empty thing that makes vasm barf (not that I would want to have NOP few thousands time in a code), but that didn't help.
- Flipping "FoldStart macro" into "macro FoldStart" results in error :"unknown mnemonic <FoldStart>
- I checked the mot section documentation and don't see a way to force the labels to use the ":" qualifier

Now, I could, in theory, preprocess my file and remove any FoldStart/FoldEnd lines and feed the rest to vasm, but that's kinda absurd. Surely I'm just missing some mot-specific syntax rule here ?

[Hedeon]

It's at the start of the line, so I guess it is seen as a label. If you want to use it as a function/macro you need to indent probably.

 FoldStart ; wait_for_gpu_to_finish
wait_for_gpu_to_finish:
 .wait_gpu:
  cmp.l #DSP_DONE, gpuState
 bne .wait_gpu
 rts
 FoldEnd

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

It's at the start of the line, so I guess it is seen as a label. If you want to use it as a function/macro you need to indent probably.

That was actually it !!!


I just indented it by a Tab and it now doesn't see it as a label. It looks weird, indented like that, for the very first block, but I'm sure I'll get used to it soon.



I guess I will have many surprises like this one, converting my whole codebase...

Thanks