chip8-toolchain

This is a complete toolchain for the CHIP-8, mostly written in C.

Status

A big part of the project is already done and tested.
But there is still a lot left to implement.

• emulator (DONE).
• toolchain backend: as, ld, objdump, bin2rom, rom2bim (DONE)
• debugger (TODO).
• compiler: Front/middle end done, backend (TODO).
• JIT x64 (TODO)

Environment

I only tested my programs on the following environment:

• Ubuntu 18.04 x64
• GCC 7.5
• python 3.6.9
• cmake 3.10.2

SDL2 needed to run the emulator application.

Build

git submodule update --init
mkdir _build
cd _build
cmake ..
make

Programs

oc8-emu

Usage: ./oc8-emu <file>

Take a CHIP-8 ROM or `.c8bin' file as input, and run the emulator.
GUI with SDL2, no sound.

oc8-as

Usage: ./oc8-as <input-file> [-o <output-file>].

Compile an assembly text file (.c8s) into object file (.c8o)

oc8-objdump

Usage: ./oc8-objdump <input-file>.

Print binary file (.c8o / .c8bin) into human-readable form

oc8-ld

Usage: ./oc8-ld <input-files> -o <output-file>.
Takes many object files (.c8o) and combine them in one binary ROM (.c8bin)

oc8-bin2rom

Usage: ./oc8-bin2rom <input-bin-file> -o <output-rom-file>.
Take a binary file (.c8bin), strip all symbol infos, and create a native CHIP-8 ROM file.

oc8-rom2bin

Usage: ./oc8-rom2bin <input-rom-file> -o <output-bin-file>.
Take a CHIP-8 ROM file, and add some genric symbol infos (empty tables) to save it to a binary file (.c8bin)

Libraries

oc8_is

• Encoder: encode ins to binary from ins struct
• Decoder: decode ins to ins struct from binary

oc8_emu

Emulate the CHIP-8 CPU and run instructions.
Can execute step by step, or with a loop and an editable clock speed.

oc8_as

Represent assembly code.

• API to build as_sfile struct
• Reader: parse .c8s files and use API above to build as_sfile struct
• Printer: Generate string (.c8s format) from the as_sfile struct, that can be parsed again with the reader.
• Assembler: build bin_file struct from as_sfile struct

oc8_bin

Represent binary data (.c8o and .c8bin files)

• API to build bin_file struct
• BinReader: Read binary .c8o / .c8bin file and build bin_file struct
• BinWriter: Write binary .c8o / .c8bin file from bin_file struct
• Printer: Generate human-readable string from bin_file struct.

oc8_ld

Take many object bin_file structs, and combine them in one runnable bin_file struct.

Other util libraries

args_parser

Really basic arguments parsers for CLI programs.
Used by most of the binaries of this projects

oc8_smap

Basic implementation of a map<string, size_t>.
Implementation based on linkled lists, will try to do best later.
Used by many libraries that need symbol tables.
The val size_t can store any number or pointer.

Testing

make check

Python required