Subject: Announcement: cc65 v2.5 released
From: [email-masked] (Ullrich von Bassewitz)
Date: 21 Jul 2000 16:18:18 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.sys.cbm,comp.sys.atari.8bit,comp.sys.apple2.programmer

I'm proud to announce version 2.5 of CC65, a C crosscompiler /
crossassembler combo for 6502 systems.

CC65 has C and runtime library support for many of the old 6502 machines.
The libraries are fairly portable, so creating a version for other 6502s
shouldn't be too much work.

Here is a list of the compiler features:

  * Includes a C compiler, macro assembler, archiver, linker, GEOS
    resource compiler and a frontend (compile & link) utility. The
    assembler generates relocatable object files, the linker is very
    configurable and allows overlays, ROMable code, split output and
    much more.

  * The compiler is not quite ISO compatible, however, a large subset
    is supported.

  * Supported target systems are:

    	- C64
    	- C128
    	- C16, C116, Plus/4
    	- CBM 600/700 family (programs run in bank 1)
    	- Newer PET machines (not 2001)
	- The Apple ][ (thanks to Kevin Ruland <[email-masked]>)
	- The Atari 8 bit machines
	- GEOS for the C64 and C128

    For all these systems a precompiled runtime and C library is
    available. Supporting more targets is not very difficult since the C
    library was written with portability in mind.

  * Several system specific support routines like a conio library or
    modules for joystick access are available.

  * The assembler and linker do also support the 65816 as a target,
    however, the compiler is not able to generate code for this CPU and
    there is no RTL support.

  * Lots of docs and a few sample programs included.

  * Easy interfacing between C code and assembler.

  * Fullscreen debugger for most machines as a linkable module.

  * Full sourcecode available as well as binaries for

  	- Linux (several RedHat RPMs)
       	- DOS
  	- Windows 95/98/NT

What is new in this version:

  * As usual many bugs fixed (and new ones introduced, so it does not get
    boring:-).

  * New -j switch to make the default character signed. New #pragma to do
    the same.

  * Slightly better code in some situations.

  * A lot of new features for the assembler:

	- Unnamed labels
	- Several emulation features
	- Listing support
	- New builtin functions
	- Include file search path support

  * The linker generates an imports list in the map file.

  * Completely rewritten symbol table handling for the compiler.

  * Lots of code cleanups. One result of this is that the -T option does
    now work without clobbering the output in some cases as it was
    before.

  * Much more code is now shared between the tools.

  * Experimental 65C02 support for the compiler.

  * Support for the Atari 8 bit machines was contributed by the Atari team:

        Christian Groessler <[email-masked]>
	Mark Keates <[email-masked]>
	Freddy Offenga <[email-masked]>
	David Lloyd <[email-masked]>

  * It is now possible to write GEOS programs for the C64 and C128 using
    cc65, thanks to the GEOSLib library contributed by

       	Maciej Witkowiak (YTM/Elysium) <[email-masked]>

  * Documentation updates.

  * More minor changes.

Support for some features is still missing. To name a few:

  * No floats, no bit fields.

  * No file routines on most systems. The 8 bit Ataris are the first
    machines that do have full file I/O support (besides the ACE port
    which was dropped some time ago). Please note that the complete CBM
    family doesn't have file I/O support!

  * The 80 column mode on the C128 is not supported by the conio library.

More information:

For your convenience, I've put all doc files also on the web server:

    http://www.von-bassewitz.de/uz/cc65/doc/

The cc65 main page

    http://www.von-bassewitz.de/uz/cc65/

will get updated to reflect the new version in the next few days.

There is also a cc65 mailing list. To subscribe, send a mail to
[email-masked] with the command

    subscribe cc65

in the body of the mail.

Available packages:

As usual I will provide the complete sources and several binary packages.
There are some binary RPMs for different versions of RedHat Linux, which
is probably one of the fastest ways to get going. Since Linux is also my
development platform, new features and bug fixes are first available for
Linux.

Binaries for DOS and and Windows will follow or may already be available
at the time you read this. While the sources do still compile under OS/2,
I have dropped support for OS/2 binaries, since were almost no downloads
of the OS/2 version.

Download:

For more information and links to the FTP server, see

    	http://www.von-bassewitz.de/uz/cc65/

For direct download, use

        ftp://ftp.musoftware.de/pub/uz/cc65/

Thanks to all who sent feedback and suggestions!

-- 
Ullrich von Bassewitz                                  [email-masked]