It appears that TCC requires specific type information on functions that are external linkage like printf. By default NASM creates references to symbols with a NOTYPE attribute in the ELF objects. This appears to confuse TCC as it seems to expect external function symbols to be marked with a FUNCTION type.
I discovered this by taking the simple C program:
#include <stdio.h>
int main()
{
printf ("hello\n");
}
and compiling it to an object file (TCC uses ELF objects by default) with a command like:
tcc -c simple.c
This generates simple.o. I happened to use OBJDUMP to display the assembly code and ELF headers. I didn't see anything unusual in the code but the symbol table in the headers showed a difference. If you use the program READELF you can get a detailed dump of the symbols.
readelf -s simple.o
Symbol table '.symtab' contains 5 entries:
Num: Value Size Type Bind Vis Ndx Name
0: 00000000 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT UND
1: 00000000 0 FILE LOCAL DEFAULT ABS simple.c
2: 00000000 7 OBJECT LOCAL DEFAULT 2 L.0
3: 00000000 26 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT 1 main
4: 00000000 0 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT UND printf
Of particular interest is the symbol table entry for printf:
4: 00000000 0 FUNC GLOBAL DEFAULT UND printf
If you were to dump the ELF headers for your hello.o object you'd seem something similar to this:
readelf -s hello.o
Symbol table '.symtab' contains 6 entries:
Num: Value Size Type Bind Vis Ndx Name
0: 00000000 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT UND
1: 00000000 0 FILE LOCAL DEFAULT ABS hello.asm
2: 00000000 0 SECTION LOCAL DEFAULT 1
3: 00000000 0 NOTYPE LOCAL DEFAULT 1 hello
4: 00000000 0 NOTYPE GLOBAL DEFAULT UND printf
5: 0000000d 0 NOTYPE GLOBAL DEFAULT 1 main
Notice how the symbol printf in hello.o differs from the one in simple.o above. NASM defines labels by default using NOTYPE attribute rather than a FUNCTION .
Use YASM instead of NASM
I don't know of any way to resolve the problem in NASM since I don't know a way to force it to use a FUNCTION type and not NOTYPE on a symbol defined as extern. I changed the type in a hex editor and it linked and ran as expected.
One alternative is to download YASM (a rewrite of NASM). For the most part NASM and YASM work the same. YASM's command line is mostly compatible with NASM so you should be able to use it as a direct replacement. YASM has an extra feature that allows you to specify the type of a symbol with the type directive:
9.3.3. TYPE: Set symbol type
ELF’s symbol table has the capability of indicating whether a symbol is a
function or data. While this can be specified directly in the GLOBAL
directive (see Section 9.4), the TYPE directive allows specifying the
symbol type for any symbol, including local symbols.
The directive takes two parameters; the first parameter is the symbol
name, and the second is the symbol type. The symbol type must be either
function or object. An unrecognized type will cause a warning to be
generated. Example of use:
func:
ret
type func function
section .data
var dd 4
type var object
You'd only have to add an extra line of type information to your assembly code for each external function you use. Your assembly code could be modified to look like:
extern printf
type printf function
hello: db "Hello world!",0
global main
main:
push hello
call printf
pop eax
ret
It should compile and link with this:
yasm -felf hello.asm -o hello.o
tcc hello.o -o hello.exe
