HeX: Your MIPS Assembly Companion 🚀

HeX is a VS Code extension designed to make your MIPS assembly programming journey smoother and more enjoyable. It provides helpful features like hover information for directives and instructions, and intelligent autocompletion for system calls. Tired of constantly looking up MIPS documentation? HeX has you covered!

Features

1. Instant MIPS Gratification 🎉

HeX loves MIPS as much as you do! When you open a .s or .asm file, you'll get a friendly reminder:

2. Hover Documentation 🔍

No more flipping through manuals! Hover over any supported MIPS directive or instruction to see a concise description and a clear example. This feature currently supports a wide range of commonly used directives and instructions, covering data definition, arithmetic operations, logical operations, memory access, control flow, and more.

Supported Directives and Instructions (Complete List):

• .text, .data, .ktext, .kdata, .align, .ascii, .asciiz, .space, .byte, .half, .word, .float, .double, .globl
• add, sub, addi, addu, addiu, subu, mul, mult, multu, madd, maddu, msub, msubu, div, divu, rem, remu, clo, clz, seb, seh, seq, sne, sle, sleu, slt, sltu, sgt, sgtu, sge, sgeu, slti, sltiu
• abs, neg, negu
• and, andi, or, ori, nor, xor, xori, not, rol, ror,rotr, rotrv, sll, sllv, sra, srav, srl, srlv
• li, la, lui, lb, lbu, lh, lhu, lw, sb, sh, sw, push, pop
• begin, end
• mfhi, mflo, mthi, mtlo, move, movz, movn
• b, beq, beqz, bne, bnez, bge, bgez, bgeu, bgt, bgtu, bgtz, blt, bltz, bltu, j, jal, jalr, jr
• syscall, break
• teq, teqi, tne, tnei, tge, tgeu, tgei, tgeiu, tgt, tgti, tgtu, tgtiu,tlt, tltu, tlti, tltiu, tle, tleu, tlei, tleiu
• nop

3. SYSCALL Autocompletion ⚡️

Writing MIPS system calls just got easier. When you type li $v0, in a MIPS file, HeX will provide a list of all available syscalls with their corresponding numbers, descriptions, and C equivalents. Select the one you need, and HeX will automatically insert the correct number and a helpful comment.

Supported Syscalls (Complete List):

Number	Label	C Equivalent	Description
1	print_int	printf("%d")	Print the integer in $a0 to the console as a signed decimal.
2	print_float	printf("%f")	Print the float in $f12 to the console as a %.8f.
3	print_double	printf("%g")	Print the double in $f12/$f13 to the console as a %.18g.
4	print_string	printf("%s")	Print the nul-terminated array of bytes referenced by $a0 to the console as an ASCII string.
5	read_int	scanf("%d")	Read an integral value from the console, with atol's semantics, into register $v0.
6	read_float	scanf("%f")	Read a floating-point value from the console, with atof's semantics, into register $f0.
7	read_double	scanf("%lf")	Read a double-precision floating-point value from the console, with atof's semantics, into registers $f0/$f1.
8	read_string	fgets()	Read a string into the provided buffer (referenced by $a0); up to size (given in $a1) bytes are read and nul-terminated.
9	sbrk	malloc()	Extend the .data segment by adding $a0 bytes; a primitive useful for, e.g., implementing malloc.
10	exit	exit(0)	The program exits with code 0.
11	print_character	putchar()	Print the character in $a0, analogous to putchar.
12	read_character	getchar()	Read the next character from the console into register $v0; analogous to getchar.
13	open	open()	Open the file specified by name (referenced by $a0) with flags (given by $a1) and mode (given by $a2). Returns file descriptor.
14	read	read()	Read len bytes (given by $a2) into buffer (given by $a1) from file descriptor fd (given in $a0).
15	write	write()	Write len bytes (given by $a2) from buffer (given by $a1) to file descriptor fd (given in $a0).
16	close	close()	Close the file given by the file descriptor fd (given in $a0).
17	exit2	exit(n)	The program exits with code (given in $a0).

Installation

1. Open Visual Studio Code.
2. Go to the Extensions view by clicking on the Extensions icon in the Activity Bar on the side of the window or pressing Ctrl+Shift+X (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+X (macOS).
3. Search for "HeX - MIPS Helper".
4. Click Install.
5. Reload VS Code.

About the Creator

This extension was created by Gururam. You can find more of my work on my website: gururam.vercel.app

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have suggestions for improvements, find a bug, or want to add support for more MIPS instructions, please open an issue or submit a pull request on the GitHub repository.