Punkpc is a collection of several loose experiments made for use in GNU Assembler that may assist in writing small binaries. The tools are presented as importable modules with a special macro that handles .include statements as needed for branching prerequisites.
I started punkpc while exploring the kind of utility that could be squeezed out of basic symbol and macro primitives in GAS. It provides in-assembler tools that are useful for writing injection code, function libraries, and small files with just as.exe; usable without a linker or a compiler.
Some of the modules offer convenient tweaks and extensions to the PowerPC language. They are all collected under the module called ppc:
Punkpc is mainly intended for use with the PowerPC instruction set, but also contains tools that work with just GNU Assembler. Other modules provide fake 'classes' in GAS that can instantiate objects for use in the assembler. These classes are simply strict uses of namespaces in macros and symbols.
For instance: the str module offers a useful class of 'string' object for creating buffers in the GAS environment. These allow for scalar literal memory to be stored, appended, and emitted elsewhere in the assembly program as part of a statement:
The stack module is another example of a useful class of object. Stacks allow for a different type of scalar memory that keep track of integers through a scalar variable, or through references to discretely named symbols.
Stack objects are also made with the obj module, and can be extended and mutated.
Lists from the list module are an extended version of stacks that include features for iterating through a stack of integer values, or reading/writing to them more easily with random access:
It's possible to do tasks such as sorting, pointing, and concatenation with the scalar buffers provided by these objects, which are normally very tedious to create in GAS. They are much easier to implement using the punkpc meta-object system.
- For a full list of the provided class modules, and some guides on how to use them -- see the table of contents in the extra readme in the doc directory.
To install punkpc, simply copy the contents of the .include directory into your working as.exe directory.
alternatively, copy the contents into a place that is accessed by the
-Icommand, for include directories.
Use the .include directive to load "punkpc.s" (in quotes, all lowercase):
.include "punkpc.s"This gives you access to the punkpc library object, which you can invoke it to import modules:
punkpc str, list, dataEach 'module' argument * corresponds with a *.s file in the library object's designated folder. For punkpc, this is the punkpc/ folder. You may adjust this as needed by your assembler environment.
Modules are imported through conditional use of the .include statement, which can be used as a manual alternative to using library objects, if desired.
This work is dual-licensed under MIT or GPL 2.0 (or any later version). You can choose between one of them if you use this work.
SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT OR GPL-2.0-or-later