SkoolKit 6.2 has been released. As always, copies are available from the download page, the Python Package Index, the Ubuntu PPA, and the Fedora copr repo.

Back in SkoolKit 2.0.6, you may remember, support for hexadecimal numbers began to appear, with control files being the first to allow numbers in either base 10 or base 16. Since then, hexadecimal has established a firm foothold as a first class number base in SkoolKit’s feature set: 2.1.1 saw skool2asm.py and skool2html.py gain the ability to convert a disassembly to hexadecimal, and in 4.3 it became possible to render address anchors and disassembly page filenames in hexadecimal. Today, 6.2 continues that tradition by adding support for hexadecimal numbers to SkoolKit’s command options wherever an address, byte, length, step, offset or range limit value is expected. So, for example, you can now do stuff like this:

$ sna2skool.py --start 0x8000 --end 0xf800 game.z80 > game.skool
$ snapmod.py --poke 0x9f43,0xff --reg pc=0xc33f game.z80 hacked.z80

In other command-related news, bin2sna.py has picked up the --reg and --state options (for setting the value of a register or hardware state attribute). And sna2img.py can now read a binary (raw memory) file when the --binary option is used, and with a specific origin address when the --org option is used. And skool2asm.py, skool2html.py and sna2skool.py all now sport the --show-config option (for showing configuration parameter values).

Enough about commands. Among the ASM directives, @nolabel is now processed in HTML mode. (This change should have been made back in SkoolKit 3.4 - when support was added for labels in HTML mode - but better late than never.) And the @keep directive is now also applied to instructions that have been replaced by an @isub, @ssub or @rsub directive. This change could affect the output of skool2asm.py on an existing disassembly, preventing the substitution of a label for an address in @isub, @ssub or @rsub mode. For example, in SkoolKit 6.1 and earlier, the instruction at 31898 below would be replaced by LD DE,31861%256*256+62 in @ssub mode, and then ‘31861’ would be replaced by a label (if there is one) because the @keep directive is not applied in @ssub mode:

@ssub=LD DE,31861%256*256+62
@keep
31898 LD DE,30014

But in 6.2, this @keep directive (originally intended to prevent a label from being substituted for the value ‘30014’) is applied in @ssub mode, and prevents a label from being substituted for ‘31861’. The fix is to use the @keep directive’s new ability to specify the values to keep:

@ssub=LD DE,31861%256*256+62
@keep=30014
31898 LD DE,30014

Now, in @ssub mode, ‘31861’ will be replaced by a label, as desired.

And that’s it for the main new features in this release. For details of all the other changes, the changelog is at your service.