CC65-Advanced-Optimizations VS rust-mos

I'd like to suggest trying C, using cc65. Assembly knowledge is useful, but working in C is much easier and fast enough most of the time. Here's a nice guide on how to write C code that runs fast on a C64: https://github.com/ilmenit/CC65-Advanced-Optimizations

The cool thing about LLVM-MOS specifically it that by using the zero page as virtual registers you sort-of get the same output with 'regular' code as opposed to this 'global variables' style of programming.

I recall a tutorial for 'cc65 optimizations'[0] which basically destroys a well-structured C program in order to do all of these optimizations (like making everything global) and it was absolutely terrible, code-wise. Well, the end result was probably fine, but it's just a shame these 'optimizations' were needed.

[0] I think it was this one: https://github.com/ilmenit/CC65-Advanced-Optimizations

rust the compiler, hell no.

But there is an llvm-mos project to generate 6502 code and that can be used to cross compile rust code.

https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Welcome

https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Rust

https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

It was possible thanks to great https://llvm-mos.org/wiki/Welcome project (it adds 6502 target to LLVM). Adding 6502 support to rust was easy part :] https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

This is a super fun project to play around with. I'm currently trying to build a C64 sprite multiplexer in mostly straight C++ using LLVM-MOS and while it's definitely not going to be the most optimized multiplexer out there, I'm finding it most adequate performance-wise.

Whereas it's probably a long way away from being able to use this for democoding due to the mostly cycle-accurate nature of the effects, for creating homebrew games and utilities this is really quite suitable: write high-level logic and sprinkle in some inline assembly here and there for the really performance critical parts.

The code that is being generated is already quite good and (on first glance) looks better than what's coming out of cc65, for instance.

There's also rust-mos which uses LLVM-MOS to compile Rust code. It unfortunately still has some issues (e.g. [1]) but that is looking really promising as well.

Kudos to all involved :)

[1] https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos/issues/16

The MEGA 65 doesn't appear to have shipped yet. The best data I could find is the MEGA 65 is based on a "GS4510". The "GS4510" is compatible with a "4502", which in turn is compatible with the 65CE02. The 65CE02 uses a different manufacturing process but the same ISA as the 6502, which is supported by rust-mos and lvm-mos](https://github.com/llvm-mos/llvm-mos).

Using llvm-mos, rust-mos, a lot of time compiling compilers and support from Mariusz (the rust-mos author), I was finally able to program like it was 1982...

This fork is handy for that. It’s fun to play with, but you need to do a decent amount yourself to get it set up.

https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos

Thanks to llvm-mos project there is also working rust fork for MOS-6502: https://github.com/mrk-its/rust-mos/tree/mos_target, so you can target 8-bit atari and c64