Summary

This RFC exposes LLVM’s support for module-level inline assembly by adding a global_asm! macro. The syntax is very simple: it just takes a string literal containing the assembly code.

Example:

global_asm!(r#"
.globl my_asm_func
my_asm_func:
    ret
"#);

extern {
    fn my_asm_func();
}

Motivation

There are two main use cases for this feature. The first is that it allows functions to be written completely in assembly, which mostly eliminates the need for a naked attribute. This is mainly useful for function that use a custom calling convention, such as interrupt handlers.

Another important use case is that it allows external assembly files to be used in a Rust module without needing hacks in the build system:

global_asm!(include_str!("my_asm_file.s"));

Assembly files can also be preprocessed or generated by build.rs (for example using the C preprocessor), which will produce output files in the Cargo output directory:

global_asm!(include_str!(concat!(env!("OUT_DIR"), "/preprocessed_asm.s")));

Detailed design

See description above, not much to add. The macro will map directly to LLVM’s module asm.

Drawbacks

Like asm!, this feature depends on LLVM’s integrated assembler.

Alternatives

The current way of including external assembly is to compile the assembly files using gcc in build.rs and link them into the Rust program as a static library.

An alternative for functions written entirely in assembly is to add a #[naked] function attribute.

Unresolved questions

None