After reading Olin's post a few days back about
using the linker it got me thinking. With linking
modules you get some advantages over absolute code
and some disadvantages. But it did give me an idea.

What about a "super assembler parser" for the PIC?

You could write the code in assembly in an easy
format, using variable names and call/goto labels
without having to think about paging and banking
issues. For program branching you would use simple
mnemonics like "branch on zero" or "call on zero"
etc.

Then you run a little dos program (parser) that
goes through the code, and replaces all the branching
mnemonics with correct (and smallest) code including
all PCLATH and paging issues. And anything that was
obviously a table or computed goto would be relocated
to the correct code page using ORGs. It would generate
an output .asm file that was easy to read and did
everything for you.

You could just type in all your assembler code,
make sure it is marked as 16F84/16F877 etc at the
top and it would generate the correct .asm file
to run on that chip. change the chip tag and
re-parse it to reconfigure code for the new PIC.

Maybe you could even get it to use the same code
on 12xxx PICs by replacing the "addlw" etc with
the appropriate instructions.

Any thoughts on this?? :o)
-Roman

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