Oatmeal - uxn laboratory

uxn laboratory

As I look to assembly nights 2 and think of trying my own take on it, I wanna have a cozy space ready to play with uxn.

The setup I’ve landed on is sort of inspired by plan9port.

Prepare the way

in home directory, create a u directory
in u clone uxn and build it
add ~/u/uxn/ to your path as $UXN
add $UXN/bin to your path
moving forward we’ll put any and all *.rom files into $UXN/bin

Utility scripts

create script called u that contains the following

#!/bin/sh

UXN=${UXN:-$HOME/u/uxn}
export UXN

case "$PATH" in
$UXN/bin:*)
    ;;
*)
    PATH=$UXN/bin:$PATH
    export PATH
    ;;
esac

case $# in
[1-9]*)
       exec "$@"
       ;;
esac

make u executable with chmod +x and mv it to /usr/local/bin or some similar space
in $UXN/bin add the following scripts, make each executable with chmod +x
lin, used to lint *.tal files before assembly.

# script name: lin
#!/bin/sh

u uxncli uxnlin.rom $1

asm, used to assemble *.tal files into executable *.roms.

# script name: asm
#!/bin/sh

u uxnasm $1 $2

run, used to run *.roms in the sdl2 uxn emulator.

# script name: run
#!/bin/sh

u uxnemu $1

cli, used to run command line *.roms into stdin/stdout at the shell prompt.

# script name: cli
#!/bin/sh

u uxncli $1

drif, an alternate assembler — this one is selfhosted and doesn’t support macros.

# script name: drif
#!/bin/sh

u uxncli drifblim.rom $1 $2

rom library

wget the following roms into $UXN/bin

wget https://rabbits.srht.site/left/left.rom
wget https://rabbits.srht.site/drifblim/drifblim.rom

rock and roll

At this point everything is set and cozy to start exploring!

Do that like so:

to lint a *.tal file,

u lin rad.tal

to assemble a *.tal file using an assembler that supports macros,

u asm rad.tal rad.rom

to assemble a *.tal file using the selfhosted assembler,

u drif rad.tal rad.rom

to run a rom in the emulator

u run rad.rom

to run a rom at the prompt

u cli rad.rom

to edit something using left,

u uxnemu left.rom -s 2 rad.tal

NOTE: the -s 2 bit makes the program run zoomed…I’ve got bad eyesight and have a high DPI screen, you may not need that flag.

Onward!

Now, I’ll be honest — I don’t know if I’ll actually do my own flavor of assembly nights with uxn, but I’m really pleased with this little setup…so, that is a step in the right direction. The other step in the right direction I’ve taken is that I started to read Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett…so far, 2 chapters in, I am enjoying it a lot.

Published October 10, 2022