Development Tips

The project was originally developed when I was studying assembly language at NJUPT.
Now in 2026, programming assisted by AI tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini has eased the development of VSCode extensions.
Thanks to the work on caiiiycuk's js-dos, we can now use a DOS emulator entirely in Node.js and browser environments. Additionally, as more features have been requested in the GitHub issues, I plan to rewrite some code for this old extension.

Main changes:

• Remove the dependency on DOSBOX binary files.
• Remove support for MS-DOS.
• Add support for more assembly languages, especially the Symbol Rename feature.
• Use js-dos as the primary emulator.
• To keep this project simple and easy to mantain, only one emulator instance is allowed in the simulation. (When use binary dosbox, the extension doesn't check this, but it is also highly recommmend)

How to build these files

This project depends on the assembly tools packaged in assembly-tool. Therefore, ensure this project is in the same directory as the assembly-tool project.

git clone https://github.com/dosasm/assembly-tool
git clone -b dev/2026 https://github.com/dosasm/masm-tasm
cd masm-tasm
pnpm install
pnpm compile-webview
pnpm compile-dev

To generate visx package

pnpx vsce package

Press F5 or Click run -> Start Debugging

Main references

• The js-dos emulator is based on https://github.com/caiiiycuk/emulators. My fork is available at https://github.com/dosasm/emulators/.
• The frontend code is based on https://github.com/caiiiycuk/js-dos.
• The reference manuals for DOSBox and DOSBox-X are also helpful.

DOS环境模拟程序运行逻辑 中文

由于DOS模拟器一般都只支持8.3的文件格式，所以我们需要设置一个模拟器与设计系统的文件同步方案。 本项目考虑到汇编语言的实际开发需求，一般做如下约定：

1. C盘作为编程工具的目录
2. D盘作为文件工作区的目录，默认使用workspace方式，即将当前的工作目录映射到D盘。