Ports for C64 cross-development (here: exomizer)

From: Felix Palmen <zirias_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2022 15:51:36 UTC
Hi all!

As we all know, FreeBSD is a "general-purpose" OS. I guess this includes
purposes you never thought of. One thing *I* use it for is
cross-development for the good old - Commodore 64 - :)

For this very special purpose, there are already ports available you
will need. Of course, emulators/vice, the arguably best emulator for
these old Commodore platforms, but what's important for cross-dev: it
contains a "monitor" (similar to a debugger) that's plain superior to
anything "native". Then, we also have more than just one cross-assembler
targeting the 6502 CPU. My personal favorite is ca65, which comes with
devel/cc65, a C(!) cross-compiler. Even when not using C, it features a
linker that works very much like you know it from modern platforms, with
memory-areas and segments you can define in a linker config.

But then, there are also things missing. Very often, you will need a
cruncher on the C64. The de-facto standard nowadays is "exomizer", which
is kind of a "cross-cruncher": It crunches data on the PC and contains
6502-code you can easily integrate in your projects to decrunch it on
the fly.

For some years now, I have ports of exomizer2 and exomizer3 in my local
ports tree. They are not very polished, just enough to work for me. But
then, if we have cross-assemblers that are *only* useful to people who
do cross-development for the C64 and similar ... why not go the full
way?

I therefore plan to "polish" my exomizer ports and get them into ports
main. Are there any objections? Or maybe, would someone welcome to have
these available?

Cheers, Felix
-- 
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