z88dk forums

Someone asked on an msx forum about the usage of (void):

https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/deve ... thout-void

Thought I just mention here. Perhaps you can help.

Thanks Timmy. I don't think I'm registered on that forum, so if you don't mind relaying...

I think the best answer is to upgrade to the latest release - I can't reproduce either of the two issues anymore.

As a bit of background: __LIB__ was originally required because z80asm had the explicit LIB scoping directive which meant to pull in from a .lib, whereas XREF meant to pull in from an object file. XDEF exported a symbol defined in that file so it could be accessed outside.

Which was all a bit fiddly, a while back z80asm changed so that GLOBAL could be used for all 3 scope cases which meant that __LIB__ was no longer required.

I did think about it, but it turns out it still has its uses. It allows us to separate out the sdcc and sccz80 entry points and thus support both compilers from the classic library.

A further comment as to why extern int func(); doesn't raise any warnings with sccz80 - it's because K&R is still accepted without any need for a command line flag.

I have answered in the other forum.

Hi dom,

What is your e-mail, so I can send you the code and explanation.

I would also like to know if anything is happening here... I also have a feeling my generated code is a bit large, but perhaps it's just me.

Anyway... You should check again with the new sign-ups, there's been another surge nowadays.

The main gist of the issue was due to changes in the MSX library - basically more of it was being linked in - in particular stdio was coming in. The below is a copy of my email to Rogerup showing the investigation approach.

Running with -z80-verb (for the old version) and -Cl-v -Ca-v for the new version there's some interesting logging:

New:

Module 'psmsx_c' size: 3166 bytes
Module 'msx_crt0' size: 187 bytes

Linking library module 'fputc_cons'
Linking library module 'closeall_c'
Linking library module 'fabandon'
Linking library module 'fclose_c'
Linking library module 'close'
Linking library module 'l_and'
Linking library module 'l_div'
Linking library module 'l_eq'
Linking library module 'l_gchar'
Linking library module 'l_ge'
Linking library module 'l_compare_result'
Linking library module 'l_gint'
Linking library module 'l_gintspsp'
Linking library module 'l_g2intspsp'
Linking library module 'l_gt'
Linking library module 'l_jphl'
Linking library module 'l_le'
Linking library module 'l_mul'
Linking library module 'l_ne'
Linking library module 'l_pint'
Linking library module 'l_uge'
Linking library module 'l_divs_16_16x16'
Linking library module 'l_small_divs_16_16x16'
Linking library module 'l_neg_de'
Linking library module 'l_neg_hl'
Linking library module 'error_divide_by_zero_mc'
Linking library module 'error_edom_mc'
Linking library module 'errno_mc'
Linking library module '_errno'
Linking library module 'error_mc'
Linking library module 'l_small_divu_16_16x16'
Linking library module 'l_mulu_16_16x16'
Linking library module 'l_small_mul_16_16x16'

Total size: 3853

Old:

(psmsx) Size of module is 3262 bytes
(msx_crt0) Size of module is 71 bytes
Linking library module <L_AND>
Linking library module <L_DIV>
Linking library module <L_DIV_U>
Linking library module <L_EQ>
Linking library module <L_GCHAR>
Linking library module <L_GE>
Linking library module <L_GINT>
Linking library module <L_GT>
Linking library module <L_LE>
Linking library module <L_LT>
Linking library module <L_MULT>
Linking library module <L_NE>
Linking library module <L_PINT>
Linking library module <L_SXT>
Linking library module <L_UGE>
Linking library module <L_UGT>
Linking library module <L_ULE>
Linking library module <L_ULT>

Total size: 3556

So from that we can see that the compiled code is smaller, so it must be in the library modules that are being linked.

For the new compiler, we can see that some of stdio is being dragged in, you're bypassing it so we can disabled it with: -pragma-define:CRT_ENABLE_STDIO=0:

zcc +msx psmsx.c -o a -compiler=sccz80 -lndos -pragma-define:CRT_ENABLE_STDIO=0 -Cl-v -Ca-v

Module 'msx_crt0' size: 69 bytes

And a total size of 3586. Looking at the linked library modules we still have this:

Linking library module 'fputc_cons'

Which again you're not using. So why is it being pulled in? This is related to https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/issues/692 - because it ends up being defined in the crt0 it ends up being linked in. We can however override the definition and point it to something else that's being used, so lets point it to the main function:

zcc +msx psmsx.c -o a -compiler=sccz80 -lndos -pragma-define:CRT_ENABLE_STDIO=0 -Cl-v -Ca-v -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=_main

Total code size 3552

Going further, lets assume that all chars are unsigned:

zcc +msx psmsx.c -o a -compiler=sccz80 -lndos -pragma-define:CRT_ENABLE_STDIO=0 -Cl-v -Ca-v -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=_main -Cc-unsigned

Total code size 3425

Let's try something a bit odd, inlining as much as we can (see https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/wiki/WritingOptimalCode)

zcc +msx psmsx.c -o a -compiler=sccz80 -lndos -pragma-define:CRT_ENABLE_STDIO=0 -Cl-v -Ca-v -pragma-redirect:fputc_cons=_main -O2 -Cc-unsigned --opt-code-speed=all

Total code size 3420

I have to admit that last one isn't the result I was expecting. I'm guessing that if the routine is only used once, it ends up using less memory to inline the specific case rather than link to the generalised library routine.