Custom Assembler

An assembler, simulator, and browser-based playground for a custom 16-bit instruction set.

Project layout

• Simple-Assembler/: Python assembler. It reads assembly source from standard input and writes machine code to standard output.
• SimpleSimulator/: Python simulator for the generated machine code.
• frontend/: React application for assembling and simulating programs in the browser.
• automatedTesting/: Grading scripts and reference programs for the assembler and simulator.

Prerequisites

• Python 3
• Node.js and npm
• On Linux, Pillow may require libjpeg-dev and zlib1g-dev.

Installing dependencies

From the repository root:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt
cd frontend
npm ci

Running the web application

cd frontend
npm start

The development server opens the React application at http://localhost:3000.

To create a production build:

cd frontend
npm run build

The compiled files are written to frontend/build/. The available npm start script runs the development server.

Running the Python tools

Assemble a source file and write the resulting machine code to a file:

cd Simple-Assembler
python3 assembler.py < ../path/to/program.asm > program.bin

Run the simulator by piping the generated machine code into it:

cd SimpleSimulator
python3 simulator.py < ../Simple-Assembler/program.bin

Automated Testing

From the repository root, run:

cd automatedTesting
./run

Available options:

• --verbose: print verbose output.
• --no-asm: skip assembler tests.
• --no-sim: skip simulator tests.

For example:

./run --verbose --no-sim

Run the frontend unit tests with:

cd frontend
npm test