0.1.0 — The First Encoded Bytes

Version 0.1.0 is the first release-worthy milestone: Kasm can parse and validate mov programs, evaluate their expressions, and print the encoded bytes.

Semantic checking arrives before encoding

381a87b — Implement semantic checking and evaluation added the step between parsing and encoding that still exists today: folding the expression AST into concrete integer values and validating that a mov’s destination register and immediate value make sense. This is the origin of the check_program stage in the pipeline documented in the project’s engineering notes (source_load → parse_program → check_program → layout → encode).

Putting semantic validation before encoding — rather than validating during encoding — set a pattern the project kept for every instruction added after it: new instructions get a parser rule, a semantic check, and an encoder entry, in that order, each backed by its own test.

mov eax, expr;

f0e5274 — Implement encoding for MOV instructions is the payoff commit: it takes a validated statement and emits real x86-64 bytes (B8 imm32) for mov eax, <expression>;. The accompanying tests compared CLI output against expected hex for the first time, establishing the “encode, then diff the hex” testing style used throughout the rest of the project (see tests/encode_file.cmake).

At this point Kasm could turn mov eax, 40+2; into five bytes of machine code and print them. It could not yet write those bytes anywhere useful, run them, or return from them — that arrives over the next three versions.