C source code, Watcom Compiler and EMU8086

Question

How can I get the Watcom compiler (the forked version 2.0 beta which runs on 64-bit hosts) to output 8086 assembly source code in an ASM file? Running wcc -0 main.c from the command prompt produces just the OBJ file.

As a side note, my main task it to convert C source code to assembly code that I can run with EMU8086 (instead of writing the actual assembly code). I am hoping the ASM file generated by Watcom would run without modification (copy-paste) in EMU8086.

Answer 1

I don't see a way to get the Watcom compiler to generate an ASM file directly, but you should be able to use the Watcom disassembler ( wdis ) to generate an assembly listing from the object file produced by the compiler. In this case you would run something like wdis -l main to read main.obj and produce a file named main.lst that contains an assembly language listing.

If you recompile main.c with a -d1 or -d2 option to place extra debugging data into the main.obj file then you can use the disassembler's -s option to have the assembly language listing interpersed with comments showing the original C source from main.c .

To get the disassembler to omit descriptive comments and just give a plain disassembly that should be acceptable as a source file for the Watcom assembler, give the -a option to the disassembler. This option will also causes the disassembler's output to be written into main.asm rather than main.lst . Sorry, I have no idea whether this output will be directly consumable by EMU8086.

This is all discussed in the Open Watcom C/C++ User Guide and C/C++ Tools User Guide linked from http://www.openwatcom.com/doc.php