technica.txt

CC386 is a general-purpose 32-bit C compiler. It is not an optimizing compiler but given that the co

VALX is fairly simple in concept.  First it loads in all the object 
files, seperating them into things like name declarations, data declarations,
and information relating to relocations of data.  After that it looks
to see if any external references still remain unresolved.  If so,
it starts reading the library files in an attempt to find modules in the
libraries that match the unresolved names.  Once that succeeds it starts
building the executable, using either defaults or switches set on the command
line to determine base addresses, executable mode, and such.  If no
segment ordering was specified, it uses a default ordering to determine
placement of everything in memory.  Then it loads the data, resolving
all the relocation items as it goes.  Unresolved relocation items
will eventually make it into the relocation section of the executable.
Next it loads in the resource files and parses them, creating the resource
section of the executable.  Finally it parses the debug information if there
was any, relocating the per-file information into global tables.

Another type of information found in the object files, browse information,
is simply discarded.

The one thing about valx is that the original author more or less created
his own language by using #define liberally to create aliased names for
most of the C language statements.  It should be fairly simple to read
what he wrote, although making changes takes some effort in learning the
technique.  I've made extensive modifications to the original code,
sticking with is extensions when possible.  The extensions are all 
defined in LANGEXT.H

The following source files make up this distribution:

ASMSUBS.C   - simple utility routines written in assembly
CV.C        - debug information module
DICTARY.C   - internal dictionary handlers
ENDLINK.C   - rundown for the linker (statistics)
EXECFILE.C  - main routine for generating DOS 16 bit images.  Calls the
            - PE file image creator if WIN32 file selected
FILES.C     - utilities for file handling
FIXUP.C     - handles relocation information
GLOBALS.C   - declares all variables as global
INITLINK.C  - initialization for the linker
LIBRARY.C   - library handlers
LINKERIO.C  - console I/O functions
LIST.C      - list manipulation
MAIN.C      - the main routine.  Just calls a bunch of other routines
MAP.C       - map file output
MEMORY.C    - memory allocation
OBJECT.C    - main line for processing the list of object modules
ORDER.C     - figures out how to place the data in memory
PE.C        - main routine for generating the PE image (except resource info)
            - also dumps the debug info to a file
RESOURCE.C  - process the resource files
SRCHPATH.C  - search for files on a path
STRING.C    - string functions
TIMER.C     - timer functions (statistics)
TMODULE.C   - main routines to parse an object file
TOKEN.C     - parse tokens on the command line
USERINP.C   - high level command line parsing
Cvexefmt.h  - pefile format
Cvinfo.h    - debug file format
DEFINES.H   - general constant macros
GLOBALS.H   - interface to find all the global variables
INITLINK.H  - linker initialization.  There is source code herein!
LANGEXT.H   - language extensions used wriing valx
SUBS.H      - declare prototypes
TYPES.H     - declare structures and other extended types