Allright, here's one for the Z80 coders amongst us. When coding for MSX, which compiler(s) do you use? Do they need further improvement, are there any lacking features? Are they user friendly enough? Are you waiting for a project like Compass 2.0 or new sjASM/tniASM/... compilers to finish? Or do you prefer to develop in PASCAL or C?

The goal of this thread is to find out whether or not new compilers are needed, or what improvements coders are expecting in this area. The better these compilers get, the easier the life of MSX developers get, the more likely we are going to see more, new and better MSX software. So: bring it in!

Whoa, watch it with the activity surge past 2am, people are trying to sleep here

I'm not much of an MSX coder, but I think I'd be most comfortable with using existing tools on the PC, like a cross assembler, and an emulator with a good debugger. Of course I'd still use the MSX, but mainly for testing the result.

Definitivly PC tools... I love Pascal (MSXPad), but I'm also using M80/L80 nowadays (specially on my latest project, yet to be announced )...

To me it's all about the whole environment. Not just a assembler, linker and such. That's why stuff like WBass2 and Compass are great. Altho Compass has very nifty features, WBass2 sparkles in usage. I like the environment which don't take up space, graphix and other recourses. It's quick and short. It lacks long labels, memory management etc. But I enhanched it with atleast some memory management and more by merging it with Midas/F-kernel.

I've not seen any other env I like. Cross assembling is NOT my style. I like to press a key to assemble a piece of code and TEST it right a way. Without saving, going to DOS (or whatever) running and exiting again just to return to sources again etc. bleh.

A very good optimizing C compiler targeted for MSX would be nice. I'm not sure about z88dk, but it looks like it's a candidate. Optimizing is a key thing. Oh, and it should be free software, of course
(We did some C development for MSX and testing it right away with an emulator is rather comfy!)

Until the beginning of 2006 I only used TASM (Chaos Assembler). Since then I use a better one: tniASM.

So I'll say I would like to see tniASM creates a file with the code and all the addresses on the left, like TASM (but it's not sooo important). As I said, it's the compiler I prefer in the moment.

Delphi / Visual Basic like dev tool for SymbOS. :-)

SymStudio could be a good start.

RAD? pfff, thaz for lamers iyam

Cross developing here, ConTEXT as editor and any good assembler like asMSX or sjASM. Also I'm eagerly waiting for SymStudio and the new SDCC developing kit.

ro: rather spend your chitchat-time on this forum on actually creating code/gfx orso, how can one of the most active MRC users be so unproductive? (esp. with YOUR track record)

I generally use a combination of Notepad2, TNIASM and SjASM. Since I generally don't use macros I tend to use TNIASM, but unfortunately TNIASM lacks 32bit defines (as in DWORD $00112244) so occasionally I use SjASM for that. Like said, I don't use an editor... Notepad2 is fine for me.

I prefer to develop in C and IMHO Ascii MSX-C produces the most efficient code: usually a C function runs "only" 2 to 3 times slower than equivalent asm version.
So I'd like a new version of MSX-C with:
- long labels (6 chars is a real bottleneck)
- native support for long and float
- inline ASM directive
Then I'd like a debugger environment to be able to run and break my program and watch vars (as TurboC for MS-DOS)

Quote:

ro: rather spend your chitchat-time on this forum on actually creating code/gfx orso, how can one of the most active MRC users be so unproductive? (esp. with YOUR track record)

Yeah, but chitchatting is much more fun these days

Macro-80 is enough
and YES, also IMHO, Ascii-C or MSX-C (I've heard it's MSX version of LSI-C) produces most efficient assembly code, it has integer types only though.

editor: gvim mainly
assembler: pasmo, sjasm or as (the HiTech C assembler)
C: HiTech C
BASIC: good olde MSX BASIC plus a weeny bit of MCBC on occasion
I'd *love* to see a better C compiler for MSX, tho...
Oh, and libraries are everything! Gimme some nice dos and graphics and music libs for HiTech C!