3.2 Compiling

Three simulators of the MIX computer, called mixvm, gmixvm and mixguile, are included in the MDK tools. They are able to run binary files containing MIX instructions written in their binary representation. You can translate MIXAL source files into this binary form using mixasm, the MIXAL assembler. So, in order to compile the hello.mixal file, you can type the following command at your shell prompt:

mixasm hello RET

If the source file contains no errors, this will produce a binary file called hello.mix which can be loaded and run by the MIX virtual machine. Unless the mixasm option -O is provided, the assembler will include debug information in the executable file (for a complete description of all the compilation options, see mixasm). Now, your are ready to run your first MIX program, as described in the following section.