NASM is a portable and modular assembler specifically designed for 80x86 architecture. With its modular and portable design, it can assemble code for a variety of operating systems and platforms.
NASM is an assembler that is designed with portability and modularity in mind. It supports various object file formats, such as Linux a.out and ELF, COFF, Microsoft 16-bit OBJ, and Win32, and it can output plain binary files. With its simple and easy-to-understand syntax, similar to Intel's but less complex, NASM also supports Pentium, P6, MMX, 3DNow! and SSE opcodes, and has macro capability. Additionally, it includes a disassembler.
The development of Netwide Assembler started with an idea on a forum where programmers agreed that there wasn't a good x86-series, free assembler available. NASM fills that gap by being a free and open-source assembler that doesn't have any underlying cost to gain 32-bit capability. It offers superior functionality to assemblers like a86, gas, as86, MASM, and TASM, which either have limited platform-availability, minimal error checking, syntax issues or compatibility issues.
Currently in prototype stage, the project welcomes bug reports, fixes, helpful information, and anything else that can help improve the assembler.
To install NASM under Unix, users need to obtain the Unix source archive and unpack it into a directory like/usr/local/src. They then need to type ./configure, which will auto-configure NASM and generate Makefiles for building the nasm and ndisasm binaries. They can then install NASM using make install. Alternatively, users can give options to the configure script or install the programs themselves. NASM comes with a set of utilities for handling the RDOFF custom object-file format, which can be installed using the specified make commands.
Finally, if NASM fails to auto-configure, users can still compile it using the fall-back Unix makefile or another one in the rdoff subdirectory. Overall, NASM is a great addition to any developer's toolkit as it provides an optimal solution for x86 assembly language programming.
The development of Netwide Assembler started with an idea on a forum where programmers agreed that there wasn't a good x86-series, free assembler available. NASM fills that gap by being a free and open-source assembler that doesn't have any underlying cost to gain 32-bit capability. It offers superior functionality to assemblers like a86, gas, as86, MASM, and TASM, which either have limited platform-availability, minimal error checking, syntax issues or compatibility issues.
Currently in prototype stage, the project welcomes bug reports, fixes, helpful information, and anything else that can help improve the assembler.
To install NASM under Unix, users need to obtain the Unix source archive and unpack it into a directory like/usr/local/src. They then need to type ./configure, which will auto-configure NASM and generate Makefiles for building the nasm and ndisasm binaries. They can then install NASM using make install. Alternatively, users can give options to the configure script or install the programs themselves. NASM comes with a set of utilities for handling the RDOFF custom object-file format, which can be installed using the specified make commands.
Finally, if NASM fails to auto-configure, users can still compile it using the fall-back Unix makefile or another one in the rdoff subdirectory. Overall, NASM is a great addition to any developer's toolkit as it provides an optimal solution for x86 assembly language programming.
What's New
Version 2.07 / 2.08 RC3: N/A