Hi All, one dumb question. I have just started ARM assembly coding. Somewhere I see the program starst with .global _start like in cpulator,. and somewhere I see program start with declaring AREA CODE READONLY. What is that? Is there any difference? or something is meant for Armv7 or Armv8 something like that?
Thanks and Regards,
Hello,
Don't worry, not a dumb question at all!
The AREA files are a proprietary format for the legacy assembler (armasm), the others are in gnu format, and are built with the armclang assembler.
Legacy files can be built with the -masm=auto option if necessary.
See the below documentation for more info:https://developer.arm.com/documentation/100068/0620/Migrating-from-armasm-to-the-armclang-Integrated-Assembler
Regards, Ronan
It sounds like you're using the armclang assembler. If you're interested in an introduction to 32-bit Arm assembly using the gnu assembler, I've posted an introductory book at https://bob.cs.sonoma.edu/IntroCompOrg-RPi/intro-co-rpi.html.