1.1.2 Compiler usage
To start working with flat assembler, simply double click on the icon of fasmw.exe file, or drag the icon of your source file onto it. You can also later open new source files with the Open command from the File menu, or by dragging the files into the editor window.
You can have multiple source files opened at one time, each one is represented by one tab button at the bottom of the editor window. To select file for editing, click on the corresponding tab with left mouse button. Compiler by default operates on the file you are currently editing, but you can force it to always operate on some particular file by clicking the appropriate tab with right mouse button and selecting the Assign command. Only single file can be assigned to compiler at one time.
When your source file is ready, you can execute the compiler with Compile command from the Run menu. When the compilation is successful, compiler will display the summary of compilation process; otherwise it will display the information about error that occurred. Compilation summary includes the information of how many passes was done, how much time it took, and how many bytes were written into destination file.
It also contains a text field called Display, in which will appear any messages from the display directives in source (see 2.2.5). Error summary consists at least of the error message and a text field Display, which has the same purpose as above. If error is related to some specific line of source code, the summary contains also a text field Instruction, which contains the preprocessed form of instruction that caused an error if the error occured after the preprocessor stage (otherwise it’s empty) and the Source list, which shows location of all the source lines related to this error, when you select a line from this list, it will be at the same time selected in the editor window (if file which contains that line is not loaded, it will be automatically added).
The Run command also executes the compiler, and in case of successful compilation it runs the compiled program if only it is one of the formats that can be run in Windows environment, otherwise you’ll get a message that such type of file cannot be executed.
If an error occurs, compiler displays information about it in the same form as if the Compile command was used.
If the compiler runs out of memory, you can increase the memory allocation in the Compiler setup dialog, which you can start from the Options menu. You can specify there the amount of kilobytes that the compiler should use, and also the priority of the compiler’s thread.