Developer Command Cycle v2.19 – User Manual

Author: RetroGameGirl (v2.19)

1. INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the Developer Command Cycle.

First: Use at your own risk. See the license information at the bottom of this manual. There may be mistakes in this code; I know there are absolutely dead functions as I spaghetti strung it together, I did learn to code using 8-bit basic on a trash-80.

I prefer coding in a standard text editor and found that a lot of the modern IDE plugins for Atari development were more complex than I needed. This script started as my personal build process and has evolved into something worth sharing.

It’s been primarily tested on *nix-based systems, but it should be portable enough to work on other platforms.

This application is designed to be run from the command line within your project’s directory. For easier access, you can add the script’s location to your system’s PATH. To begin, simply select your main source file and the appropriate toolchain. If your toolchain is missing, you can configure it easily. The recommended way to add a new toolchain is through the ‘Settings’ menu, which will safely update the configuration file. As an alternative for advanced users, new toolchains can be defined directly within the DEFAULT_CONFIG section of the script.

Requirements:

Python Environment:

• Python 3.x: The script uses modern syntax like f-strings, so a recent version of Python 3 is required.
• Tkinter: This is the library used for the GUI. It’s included with most Python installs on Windows and macOS, but on Linux, you may need to install it separately (e.g., sudo apt-get install python3-tk).

Operating System:

• The script is designed to be cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux). However, it performs best on Linux or macOS because it uses the pty module for cleaner interactive terminal control, which isn’t available on Windows. It will still function on Windows, but the console behavior might differ slightly.

External Atari 7800 Tools:

• 7800asm: The assembler for your .s or .asm source files.
• cc65 toolchain: Specifically, the cl65 compiler for C projects.
• 7800header: Utility to add the required header to your ROM.
• 7800sign: Utility to sign your ROM, typically used with cc65.
• An Atari 7800 Emulator: The default is a7800, but this can be configured to use MAME or another emulator.
• A Text Editor: Your preferred editor for writing code (defaults to xed).

What It Does:

This tool is a graphical front-end for the common command-line utilities such as those used in Atari 7800 development. The goal is to simplify the workflow, allowing you to build ROMs and launch them in an emulator with a few clicks instead of typing out commands for each step of the process.