How do I compile MASM 9 with VStudio 2008?

[sysop1911]

I wrote an assembly program in Notepad and changed the extension to .asm. I found the MASM file, ML.exe in MS Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin. In command prompt, I ran "ML first.asm", but got an error "MASM : fatal error A1000:cannot open file : first.asm" even though I had the file in the correct location. Any help? Thanks.

[Master.]

I wrote an assembly program in Notepad and changed the extension to .asm. I found the MASM file, ML.exe in MS Visual Studio 9.0\VC\bin. In command prompt, I ran "ML first.asm", but got an error "MASM : fatal error A1000:cannot open file : first.asm" even though I had the file in the correct location. Any help? Thanks.

(for masm 6.14 as far as i know you need three files for a successful compilation , Masm.exe Link.exe, and Ml.exe, i dont think the masm 9 differs in this way
.and for that 'can't open file' error , try copying your source code in another file and save it again , and delete this file , i've faced this kind of error alot during coding in asm , and doing this solved the issue in 99% of the time

[Eri523]

Hmmm... I have a MASM 6.14 here, and it has ml.exe and link.exe, but no masm.exe. It has always compiled my files perfectly without that.

I have been editing my ASM source files with Notepad++, but I can't imagine how this could make any difference.

[Master.]

Hmmm... I have a MASM 6.14 here, and it has ml.exe and link.exe, but no masm.exe. It has always compiled my files perfectly without that.

I have been editing my ASM source files with Notepad++, but I can't imagine how this could make any difference.

really? i've been recently using this compiler , ( you know that i've always used masm 5.10 ) and for compiling my sourcecode , i actually do :

masm my.asm, , , ,
link my.obj, , , , ,

and this compiles just fine !
and same here, i do also use notepad++ for editing my asm codes, but believe me this happened to me , and the only way i could get it to compile was to copy the whole source codes and paste them to a newly created file( .asm) and it worked then.
and yet i couldn't have figured out what the cause could be .
whats that Ml.exe anyway?

[Eri523]

Just last week I built a DLL with MASM 6.14 and this batch file:

 
@echo off
 
if exist bcdll.obj del bcdll.obj
if exist bcdll.dll del bcdll.dll
 
rem Add /Fl on the following line to get output listing
\masm32\bin\ml /c /coff bcdll.asm
 
\masm32\bin\Link /SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS /DLL /DEF:bcdll.def bcdll.obj
 
dir bcdll.*
 
pause

It is a modified version of a batch file that was contained in one of the examples that came with the package and works just fine.

whats that Ml.exe anyway?

Early DOS versions of Microsoft C had a cl.exe that in turn called c1.exe, c2.exe and c3.exe, which contained the preprocessor, the core compiler and the optimizer. So I think cl.exe could be considered some kind of wrapper for the individual components. Current VC++ compilers appear to be constructed in a similar way, although the components are DLLs now.

I think they simply adopted that pattern for their newer assembler versions, where ml.exe itself contains the entire assembler. IMO your masm.exe could be a wrapper that converts the original masm syntax and then calls ml.exe.