| WHAT TO READ? |
| ============= |
| |
| For quick installation tips read INSTALL. |
| |
| For the list of asn1c command line options, see `asn1c -h` or `man asn1c`. |
| |
| For more complete documentation on this compiler and on using the |
| results of compilation please look into ./doc directory. |
| |
| Please also read the FAQ file. |
| |
| An excellent book on ASN.1 is written by Olivier Dubuisson: |
| "ASN.1 Communication between heterogeneous systems", ISBN:0-12-6333361-0. |
| |
| QUICK START |
| =========== |
| |
| After building [and installing] the compiler (see INSTALL), you may use |
| the asn1c command to compile the ASN.1 specification: |
| |
| asn1c <module.asn1> |
| |
| If several specifications contain interdependencies, all of them must be |
| specified: |
| |
| asn1c <module1.asn1> <module2.asn1> ... |
| |
| The ./examples directory contains several ASN.1 modules and a script to |
| extract ASN.1 modules from RFC documents. To compile X.509 PKI module: |
| |
| ./asn1c/asn1c -P ./examples/*PKIX*93*.asn1 |
| |
| In this example, -P option is used to instruct the compiler to print the |
| compiled text on the standard output instead of creating multiple .c |
| and .h files for every ASN.1 type found inside the specified ASN.1 modules. |
| This is useful for debugging and test automation. |
| |
| The compiler -E and -EF options are used for testing the parser and |
| the semantic fixer, respectively. These options will instruct the compiler |
| to dump out the parsed (and fixed) ASN.1 specification as it was |
| "understood" by the compiler. It might be useful for checking |
| whether a particular syntactic construction is properly supported |
| by the compiler. |
| |
| asn1c -EF <module-to-test.asn1> |
| |
| |
| MODEL OF OPERATION |
| ================== |
| |
| The asn1c compiler works by processing the ASN.1 module specification |
| in several stages: |
| 1. In the first stage, the ASN.1 file is parsed. |
| (Parsing produces an ASN.1 syntax tree for the subsequent levels) |
| 2. In the second stage, the syntax tree is "fixed". |
| (Fixing is a process of checking the tree for semantic errors, |
| accompanied by the tree transformation into the canonical form) |
| 3. In the third stage, the syntax tree is compiled into the target language. |
| |
| There are several command-line options reserved for printing the results |
| after each stage of operation: |
| |
| <parser> => print (-E) |
| <parser> => <fixer> => print (-E -F) |
| <parser> => <fixer> => <compiler> => print (-P) |
| <parser> => <fixer> => <compiler> => save-compiled [default] |
| |
| |
| -- |
| Lev Walkin |
| vlm@lionet.info |