I thought I'd put a post out here for anyone working with PIC16 microcontrollers who might be interested in this assembler I've been working on. I started developing this around 2017 because I found Microchip's development platform too bloated for my liking (especially MPLABX).
There's still work to be done. It does not handle separate object file, but supports included files (similar to the venerable a86 assembler for Intel). Output is direct to .hex file, ready to burn.
The current release is version 0.8.1, available at
From my listing at
asm1825 is a lightweight standalone assembler for PIC microcontrollers, specifically the PIC16(L)F1825 and similar variants. It is a two pass command line based assembler producing ready to burn .hex output with support for macros, file inclusion, and arithmetic evaluation of operands. It follows the opcode definitions in the '1825 datasheet and makes no explicit attempt at full compatibility with other specific assemblers (such as mpasm), but hopefully does not break compatibility without good cause. Speed of assembly is one of its primary goals. asm1825 has no library dependencies beyond a standard libc. As development continues, support for more PIC12 and PIC16 series microcontrollers will be added.
Hopefully it proves useful to others. Questions/comments/bug reports are all welcome.
--Andrew