On Linux 64 bit the compiler defaults to using the internal assembler. When adding the -a command line option an external assembler is called. This is unexpected based on the description of the -a option. Specifying -Aelf (to force using the internal assembler) is also ignored when used with -a, without a message. Also when using the -s option the internal assembler is disabled, again somewhat unexpectedly in my opinion.

Is this behaviour documented somewhere else? Since it is unexpected (at least from my understanding of the documentation), can this behaviour be added to the command line help output?

Would it make sense to implement an alternative interpretation, where the internal assembler is used if specified/default with just an output writer for the -a case? In the case of -s there would be no assembler output, so the user can then only check and tweak the linking step.

Best regards,
Christo

Christo Crause wrote

Would it make sense to implement an alternative interpretation, where the internal assembler is used if specified/default with just an output writer for the -a case?

The compiler only supports activating a single assembler writer at a time. I'm not sure it worth reworking that logic just to support writing a text assembler file and then assembling using the internal assembler.

In the case of -s there would be no assembler output, so the user can then only check and tweak the linking step.

You can use the -Cn parameter for that.

Jonas

Apart from complicating things, using a different writers for the text output and for assembled binary might result in differences (assembled output from the text assembler source might not be absolutely equal to the result of the internal assembler) which might lead to serious confusions. Obviously, we may extend the description of this option in the documentation (and also of -s) in order to avoid surprises - feel free to create a bug report for the docs.

Tomas