Path: csiph.com!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: kegs@provalid.com (Kent Dickey) Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2.programmer,comp.emulators.apple2 Subject: Re: Integrated development on emulators: The next step Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2025 19:38:37 -0000 (UTC) Organization: provalid.com Lines: 50 Message-ID: <10c6ejt$1qvka$1@dont-email.me> References: Injection-Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2025 19:38:38 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="63161713e8ae6ab07ff62db15dbafbf3"; logging-data="1932938"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18NuCmpfeSkFRR0g9FQKgh6" Cancel-Lock: sha1:Tp6YS89tA0YZdV7NNC0ltX4l5Tc= Originator: kegs@provalid.com (Kent Dickey) X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test76 (Apr 2, 2001) Xref: csiph.com comp.sys.apple2.programmer:6332 comp.emulators.apple2:3910 In article , Steve Nickolas wrote: >On Tue, 7 Oct 2025, D Finnigan wrote: > >> Here's an idea for the Apple II emulator authors: why don't we have >> emulators with an integrated assembler? The assembler would produce object >> code copied directly in the RAM of the emulated machine. Or the object code >> would be copied to a ProDOS or DOS 3.3 disk image. >> >> Furthermore, why not integrate a C compiler or some other high-level >> language? Output options would be the same: the object could would be >> written directly to the emulated RAM, ready for execution. Or it could be >> copied to a disk image. >> >> I think that these features would speed up cross-development considerably. >> It would be a lot easier to interchange source files with the host >> environment, across the Internet, and in version control systems. > >One of my abandoned projects, which was written by me and Holger Picker, >actually did have an integrated assembler and even used it to roll the >slot ROMs on the fly. I thought of rewriting the code so it wasn't just a >binary blob, but never got around to it. > >Now that I have other content, like Gameware, and most of FPBASIC is fair >game, this could be extended even further. > >-uso. There are other ways to get into and out of emulators. You can use Ethernet to mount an SMB volume, and dynamically change files from your host computer. This is https://github.com/sheumann/smbfst, but is IIgs only. I'm not sure what else is there, if you can take the time to set up a Netatalk server, using Ethernet emulation can let you mount APFS file servers (this seems to be tricky to setup, though). Most emulators allow easy loading of external files into memory, and this can be scripted. So you build on your host machine, then load the binary into the emulator. Tools like CiderPress2 https://github.com/fadden/CiderPress2 and Cadius https://brutaldeluxe.fr/products/crossdevtools/cadius/index.html allow easy creation of ProDOS volumes of files from your host system. KEGS allows mounting a directory on your computer as a ProDOS volume, where it is just a plain ProDOS volume to any emulated code. I called it DynaPro. You need to restart emulation if you change a file, to make sure it sees the change. As best as I can tell, no one uses it. Kent