0.2.0–0.4.0 — RET, Binary Output, and Generated Headers

Three fast, small versions turned “prints hex” into “produces something you could plausibly link into a program.”

0.2.0 — ret;

0cdc732 — Implement RET instruction support added the C3 opcode. Trivial in isolation, but it meant a Kasm program could now be a complete, callable function body rather than just a mov: mov eax, 40+2; ret; is the canonical example that reappears throughout the README and this journal.

0.3.0 — Bytes that leave the process

3b83695 — Update project version to 0.3.0, add binary writing functionality, and implement reusable example encoding tests introduced write_binary, saving the encoded image to program.bin. This is also when the project adopted its per-example, isolated-output-directory testing convention: each example .asm file gets its own test output directory so parallel test runs never collide over program.bin.

0.4.0 — Bytes a C compiler can embed

6327c4a — Update project version to 0.4.0, implement write_c function, and add generated output files added write_c, emitting generated.h as a C byte array plus its length. A tiny inspector program could now #include the generated header and print the bytes back out — the first sign that Kasm’s output was meant to be consumed by other programs, not just inspected as hex on a terminal.

By 0.4.0, the round trip was: assemble → validate → encode → save as .bin → save as a C header. The only thing missing was actually running the result, which is the subject of the next chapter.