ColdFire-Specific Information

Almost all the information of earlier chapters pertains to ColdFire target processors. The few differences are:

• Comments - Assembly Language Syntax explains these common ways to specify comments:
  • Characters //, starting in any column.
  • Characters /* ... */, starting in any column.
  • An asterisk ( *), starting in the first column of the line.
  • A space in an operand field, provided that you clear the Allow space in operand field checkbox of the Assembler settings panel.

    A ColdFire target processor gives you these additional ways to specify comments:

  • In GNU mode: starting the comment with a vertical stroke ( |) character.
  • Not in GNU mode: starting the comment with a semicolon ( ;).

    Such comments may begin in any column of a line.

• Hexadecimal Notation - For ColdFire processors, the preferred hexadecimal notation is $, as in $deadbeef. This contrasts with Chapter 2, which explains that the preferred notation for most processors is 0x.
• Sections - As Using Directives explains, not all target architectures support the small-data assembler directives .sbss, .sbss2, .sdat, .sdata0, or .sdata2. For the ColdFire architecture, the linker can be more restrictive than the assembler. You may need to experiment to find out which of these directives are supported by both your assembler and linker.
• As with most assemblers, the ColdFire assembler generates ELF, not COFF, object files.
• Automatic Debugging - For automatic generation of debugging information, your linker may require that instructions be in the .text section.
• A processor selection option is added to the assembler settings. This selection defines the processor context, its instruction set, co-processors and system registers available to 'movec'.