Summary

The development cycle for an assembly language program involves the use of numerous programs. Typically, these include a text editor, an assembler, and a linker to produce an executable program. We have discussed the symbolic assembler in detail, as it provides the interface between the human programmer and the machine.

When you test a newly constructed program, the results may not be as expected. A symbolic debugger can help speed the rectification of oversights and errors by stepping through the program and displaying intermediate values. Basic HP-UX and GNU open-source software tools have been illustrated for the Itanium architecture.

The discussion of elementary use of the symbolic debugger is vital in the remainder of this book for demonstrating program operation.