I'm finding that much of the time I try to compile DMD from Git HEAD, the timestamp on 'src/rt/minit.obj' has become out of date with the timestamp on 'src/rt/minit.asm', causing the makefile to try to rebuild it, and bail with "masm not found" until I update the timestamp on masm.obj. Anyone else finding this a common thing, too?

The thing is, according to earlier discussions (about a years or two ago, IIRC), minit.asm is something that basically never changes and shouldn't change. And indeed, according to Git, aside from the copyright/license comments, it hasn't changed since *at least* as far back as 2009.

So I'm thinking: Perhaps the makefiles should be adjusted so that minit.(obj|asm) are ignored unless a special extra build target is specified? Or is there a better way?

On 2/15/13, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
> Anyone else finding this a common thing, too?

Yes. My personal fix is to create an empty "masm386.bat" file and put it in my %PATH%. The makefile happily invokes it even though it does nothing, and the build can continue.

On 2/15/2013 2:39 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 2/15/13, Nick Sabalausky <SeeWebsiteToContactMe@semitwist.com> wrote:
>> Anyone else finding this a common thing, too?
>
> Yes. My personal fix is to create an empty "masm386.bat" file and put
> it in my %PATH%. The makefile happily invokes it even though it does
> nothing, and the build can continue.
>

LOL. I just do:

   touch minit.obj

as required.

On 2/16/13, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> LOL. I just do:
>
>     touch minit.obj
>
> as required.

Mine's more automated. :p

Btw, have you had the chance to look at https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/1 ?

On 2/15/2013 6:19 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 2/16/13, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>> LOL. I just do:
>>
>>      touch minit.obj
>>
>> as required.
>
> Mine's more automated. :p
>
> Btw, have you had the chance to look at
> https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/1 ?
>

I looked at it, but I haven't gone through it. Thanks for doing it! What's standing in the way of you building it?

On 16.02.2013 05:07, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 2/15/2013 6:19 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>> On 2/16/13, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>> LOL. I just do:
>>>
>>>      touch minit.obj
>>>
>>> as required.
>>
>> Mine's more automated. :p
>>
>> Btw, have you had the chance to look at
>> https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/1 ?
>>
>
> I looked at it, but I haven't gone through it. Thanks for doing it!
> What's standing in the way of you building it?

I actually succeded in building optlink, but there are a few things that had to be changed:

- masm (v9 or v10) complained about a number of "mov AL,errorCode" which had to be changed to AX (I guess it would not assume an external to fit into a byte)

- I had to add a number of ridiculous "BYTE PTR" modifiers

- The SLR tools are 16-bit executables so I installed a VM running XP just to find out that they don't work there too. Instead I changed the makefiles to use lib from the dmd distrubution rather than optlib.

What version of masm are you using?

Shall I make it a pull request?

On 2/15/2013 11:59 PM, Rainer Schuetze wrote:
>
>
> On 16.02.2013 05:07, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 2/15/2013 6:19 PM, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
>>> On 2/16/13, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>>> LOL. I just do:
>>>>
>>>>      touch minit.obj
>>>>
>>>> as required.
>>>
>>> Mine's more automated. :p
>>>
>>> Btw, have you had the chance to look at
>>> https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/1 ?
>>>
>>
>> I looked at it, but I haven't gone through it. Thanks for doing it!
>> What's standing in the way of you building it?
>
> I actually succeded in building optlink, but there are a few things that had to
> be changed:
>
> - masm (v9 or v10) complained about a number of "mov AL,errorCode" which had to
> be changed to AX (I guess it would not assume an external to fit into a byte)
>
> - I had to add a number of ridiculous "BYTE PTR" modifiers
>
> - The SLR tools are 16-bit executables so I installed a VM running XP just to
> find out that they don't work there too. Instead I changed the makefiles to use
> lib from the dmd distrubution rather than optlib.
>
> What version of masm are you using?

5.10 from 1988 :-)

Masm constantly changed the syntax it would accept.


> Shall I make it a pull request?

You can, but I don't have those masm's. Or maybe I do in VS10, I just never looked.

On 2/16/2013 12:28 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> You can, but I don't have those masm's. Or maybe I do in VS10, I just never looked.

Ok, I looked, and I have an ml.exe that says it's Macro Assembler Version 10.00.30319.01

On 2/16/13, Rainer Schuetze <r.sagitario@gmx.de> wrote:
> I actually succeded in building optlink

That's great to hear. If you could make a pull to update to the latest MASM compiler it would be great.

On 16.02.2013 15:49, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 2/16/13, Rainer Schuetze <r.sagitario@gmx.de> wrote:
>> I actually succeded in building optlink
>
> That's great to hear. If you could make a pull to update to the latest
> MASM compiler it would be great.
>

https://github.com/DigitalMars/optlink/pull/2