Development tools for the ZX Spectrum

The Dockerfile is the basis of the devcontainer and can be changed to add or remove tools. It will take a long time to build locally, so by default the devcontainer will pull a prebuilt version. Edit .devcontainer/devcontainer.json if you would rather build your own.

The devcontainer contains:

• pasmo (assembler)
• sjasmplus (assembler)
• z80asm (assembler)
• z80dasm (disassembler)
• zmakebas (creates BASIC programs)
• z88dk (C compiler and other utilities including assembler)
• utilities from the FUSE emulator:
  • audio2tape
  • createhdf
  • fmfconv
  • listbasic
  • profile2map
  • raw2hdf
  • rzxcheck
  • rzxdump
  • rzxtool
  • scl2trd
  • snap2tzx
  • snapconv
  • snapdump
  • tape2pulses
  • tape2wav
  • tapeconv
  • tzxlist
• zx0 (binary compressor)
• dzx0 (binary decompressor)
• ZX BASIC (aka Boriel BASIC)
  • zxbc (BASIC compiler)
  • zxbasm (assembler)
  • zxbpp (preprocessor)
• ttttt (converts binaries into .tap blocks)
• git (version control)
• make (build control)

Several useful VSCode extentsions will be installed, including a Z80 assembly language server, Z80 and C debugger, Makefile support, BASIC syntax highlighter and more.

Thanks to the many authors of these wonderful tools and extensions; to think what we could have made with these in 1985!

Install

This devcontainer should work in Windows, Linux and MacOS. It is recommended to install:

• git, then configure user name and email address
• docker, or alternative like podman
• (Windows only, optional) Windows Subsystem for Linux, version 2
• Microsoft's vscode
• the "Dev Containers" extension (from Microsoft) within vscode

Make sure docker (or your alternative) is running before trying to use the devcontainer.

Usage

Open a terminal and navigate to the directory which will contain your Spectrum projects. Run git clone https://github.com/mcphail/speccydev.git your_project_name and enter that directory. Start vscode by running code . inside the directory.

If you have installed the Dev Containers extension correctly, a popup will offer to reload the project within a devcontainer. Go ahead and allow this. The first time you use this devcontainer, it may take a few minutes to download and start. It should open more quickly on subsequent use.

Open the bottom bar in vscode to expose the terminal or select "Terminal -> New Terminal" from the menu bar. Try running some Linux commands like ls -lh or date. Build the example project by running make from the terminal or the VSCode extension. Experiment with editing some of the source files and running make again. Experiment with some of the assemblers, compilers and other tools mentioned above. The Makefile contains example usage of tools like sjasmplus, zmakebas, Boriel's BASIC and the FUSE utilities.

When you are ready to start your own project, run make start_new_project to wipe out the example code and start afresh.

Debugging

Debug in the built in simulator or in CSpect externally (example CSpect invocation on Windows would be CSpect.exe -w2 -debug -remote). The simulator is set up to expect a binary called myprog.sna and a map file called myprog.sld but this can be configured in the .vscode/launch.json file.

Note: to use CSpect debugging from a Linux host you will have to edit the file .vscode/launch.json to change the "hostname" parameter to "localhost"