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From: don@eecs.umich.edu (Don Winsor)
Newsgroups: comp.edu,comp.lang.asm370,com.lang.misc,alt.lang.asm
Subject: Assembly language teaching on Unix
Message-ID: <1991May23.180755.7272@zip.eecs.umich.edu>
Date: 23 May 91 18:07:55 GMT
Sender: don@zip.eecs.umich.edu (Don Winsor)
Organization: University of Michigan EECS Dept.
Lines: 29

What kinds of software tools are available for teaching
assembly language programming in a Unix environment?
I would be interested in hearing from anyone involved
in teaching an assembly language course on Unix systems.

Two particular questions are on my mind.  First, most "old"
assemblers (mainframes, many microcomputer systems, etc.)  can
generate assembly listings which show the generated code in
hex, the source, the symbol table, etc.  None of the Unix
assemblers I have seen seem to be able to do this.  Second, some
kind of symbolic debugging capability would be very useful.

The thought has crossed my mind of taking "gas", the GNU assembler
and hacking some listing generation and "gdb" debugger symbol
generation capabilities into it, but I'd rather not reinvent the
wheel if there is a simple solution that is already available.

We can't be the only university that has moved assembly teaching from
an old mainframe to a Unix system; what is everyone out there doing?
Advice, pointers to software, etc. would be very much appreciated.

Donald Winsor, Ph.D.
Senior Systems Research Programmer
Departmental Computing Organization
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan

don@eecs.umich.edu
313-764-8543