M4: SplitBit assembles SplitBit, and then assembles itself

> load Asm.sbx
    > run cosmos.asm
    wrote cosmos.bin: program 7036, data 2448, labels 475
    > run Asm.asm
    wrote Asm.sbx: program 7533, data 4099, labels 555

Both byte for byte identical to what the host assembler builds from the
same source. The machine now builds the operating system it is running on,
and builds the thing that built it.

THE CHECK THAT MATTERS MOST IS THE THIRD ONE. A binary that matches could
still have come from an assembler wrong in some way this particular source
happens not to exercise. So Tests/native.sh boots the CosmOS that CosmOS
built and has THAT assemble CosmOS again - and the second generation is
identical to the first, down to the cycle count. It is a fixed point: the
machinery has been through itself. After this the host is a convenience
rather than a necessity.

WHAT STOOD IN THE WAY was not the assembler. It loaded, faulted at 7,780
cycles, and the fault was in CosmOS: a loaded program is staged at 0x8000
before being blitted into place, so the whole FILE has to fit in the 32,768
bytes above it. The assembler's file was 33,983, and 22K of that was
zeroed scratch buffers - because #Reserve emits what it reserves.

None of that is initialised data. It is scratch, wanted only while the
assembler runs, and while it runs everything above its own data is free.
So the buffers are a MAP now rather than declarations - Assembler/scratch.asm
writes down six addresses and the file carries none of it. 33,983 bytes
became 11,648, and the assembler could load itself.

The map has a file of its own because the reader and the label table both
need addresses out of it while neither includes the other.

The sizes are cut to the largest thing it is asked to build, and that turns
out not to be the operating system: the assembler is 555 labels and 11,648
bytes of output against CosmOS's 475 and 9,564. The hardest thing this
assembles is itself.

Also: sizing it for CosmOS meant raising the label table, and raising the
label table is what pushed the file over the staging limit. The two facts
only met because the first one was tried.

Speed, measured rather than guessed: CosmOS takes 80,168,646 cycles, which
is eighty seconds of emulated time and under a second under --fast. Most of
it is a straight walk of 475 label names, several thousand times. Sorting
or bucketing that is easy and was deliberately not written before there was
something to measure.

make run-cosmos now puts every source file on the disk, so the whole thing
can be done rather than read about.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01E2JrLzFvuFX9fgi1LDRjrW
This commit is contained in:
Anachronaut
2026-08-21 12:03:31 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 20989c3439
commit fb335681d2
12 changed files with 180 additions and 55 deletions
+13 -2
View File
@@ -86,10 +86,11 @@ cosmos: $(COSMOS) $(APPS) $(NATIVE_ASM)
# also whatever used to be.
$(COSMOS_DISK): $(APPS) $(NATIVE_ASM) testPrograms/stringKeyword.asm \
CosmOS/Apps/hello.asm CosmOS/Apps/Say.asm CosmOS/Apps/Keys.asm \
CosmOS/Source/services.asm CosmOS/Source/console.asm
CosmOS/Source/services.asm CosmOS/Source/console.asm \
$(wildcard CosmOS/Source/*.asm) $(wildcard CosmOS/Assembler/*.asm)
@mkdir -p $(@D)
rm -f $@
$(DISKTOOL) format $@ 2048 4
$(DISKTOOL) format $@ 4096 8
@for app in $(APPS); do $(DISKTOOL) put $@ $$app; done
$(DISKTOOL) put $@ $(NATIVE_ASM)
@# SOURCE goes on as well, because an assembler with nothing to assemble is a
@@ -112,6 +113,16 @@ $(COSMOS_DISK): $(APPS) $(NATIVE_ASM) testPrograms/stringKeyword.asm \
$(DISKTOOL) put $@ CosmOS/Source/services.asm
$(DISKTOOL) put $@ CosmOS/Source/console.asm
$(DISKTOOL) put $@ testPrograms/stringKeyword.asm strings.asm
@# And the whole of CosmOS, and the whole of the assembler, so that the machine can
@# build the system it is running on and then build the thing that built it:
@#
@# > load Asm.sbx
@# > run cosmos.asm
@# > run Asm.asm
@#
@# Both come out byte for byte what the host tool makes from the same source.
@for f in CosmOS/Source/*.asm CosmOS/Assembler/*.asm; do \
$(DISKTOOL) put $@ $$f >/dev/null; done
# The system as well as the disk. Building only the image leaves whatever cosmos.bin was
# there before, or none at all, and then the disk is booted with a system that does not