CODEWITHSUNDEEP
assemblynasm
Ryekseu
Ryekseu

Reputation: 47

(Assembly NASM says "unable to open include file 'include.inc'"

I was finishing a small project that I had in mind(thanks to Tinkernut)to make a small operating system using Assembly. I made it from scratch and when I was done with the main files,I thought of adding some programs into the OS. so,i MADE a edit.asm file(Note:The spaces are part of the code):

; ------------------------------------------------------------------
; RhalexOS Text Editor 
; ------------------------------------------------------------------


    BITS 16
    %INCLUDE 'rhalexdev.inc'
    ORG 32768

(Everything else has been removed since it has nothing to do with the problem at hand)

But when I do this(I do have NASM installed): nasm edit.asm -o edit.bin

I get this: edit.bin.7: Unable to open include file 'rhalexdev.inc'

I have been stuck here for an hour.Please help me.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 8073

Answers (2)

user13947194
user13947194

Reputation: 402

Use -I includepath.
Include a / or \ separator at the end of includepath if you're using old NASM versions.

I am using NASM ver 2.07 and had the same problem. Like I was trying the -i option millions of times and I still got include file not found error. And my include file path was correct, I double checked.

No @David C. Rankin. It's not just like C; it is similar to C.

The problem is that old NASM version did the following when resolving relative include paths:

const char *rel_fpath = parseIncludeDirective();
const char *include_path = nextIncludedPath();
char *full_fpath = newString( strlen(rel_fpath) + strlen(include_path) + 1 );
sprintf(full_path,"%s%s",include_path,rel_fpath);

As you can see at line 4 they simply concatenate the two paths without adding a directory separator. Which means that...

c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS Making\programs

and

rhalexdev.inc

becomes

c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS Making\programsrhalexdev.inc

With a trailing \ at the end of ...\programs\, it will just work even in this old NASM version. Newer NASM versions don't need this and will join strings with a directory separator between them.

Upvotes: 1

David C. Rankin
David C. Rankin

Reputation: 84521

Oh my goodness. The screenshot does disclose the problem. The problem is you are not compiling in the same directory as rhalexdev.inc.

You need to either change to the c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS Making\programs\ directory before attempting to compile with nasm edit.asm -o edit.bin or you need to provide an -i include path when you try to compile in c:\Program Files\nasm. The problem with the -i solution is you will have to either quote or escape the include path name to handle the spaces in the directory names.

What I would do is create a directory under your c:\Documents and Settings\your_account\My Documents\nasm (or whatever name you choose). Then copy all the source files from c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS Making\programs\ to c:\Documents and Settings\your_account\My Documents\nasm. Then in the c:\Documents and Settings\your_account\My Documents\nasm issue the nasm edit.asm -o edit.bin command.

I would not recommend compiling in the Program Files or Administrator\Desktop directories. You can, just not what I would recommend.

If you want to build in c:\Program Files\nasm, then you will need to try something like:

nasm edit.asm -o edit.bin -i'c:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS Making\programs\'

as quoted above with the trailing \, or with spaces escaped:

nasm edit.asm -o edit.bin -ic:\Documents\ and\ Settings\Administrator\Desktop\OS\ Making\programs\

I suspect this will take care of your problem.

Upvotes: 2

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