Ticket #380 (Fixed)Thu Feb 27 13:45:22 UTC 2014

Add support for 'RN' directive to a8time

Details by Jeffrey Lee (213):

The a8time tool included in the DDE is very useful, but using it isn’t always straightforward due to its requirement that the input file has to use the standard ARM/APCS register names. If you’re trying to optimise/schedule some code which uses custom register names or is taken from a macro definition (i.e. names starting with ‘$’) then you have to either build and disassemble your code each time you want to analyse it, or manually rename the registers to something a8time will accept – and then rename them back again once you’re done tweaking the code.

If a8time supported the ‘RN’ directive (including the ability to create register names starting with ‘$’) then this process would become a lot simpler, allowing you to edit the source in the same form that it appears in your assembler sources.

If it makes implementation significantly easier, I have no problem with the pipeline display sticking to the standard ARM register names; it’ll usually be easy enough to spot which output instruction matches up to which input instruction.