Extracted from #215 (comment).

Currently Zig relies on LLVM for assembly parsing on all targets.

It's a big project if Zig were to take on knowledge of the assembly format of every supported target, but if we were to do that, it would bring some benefits:

• Intel/NASM syntax for x86 which is generally preferable to AT&T syntax which we are currently stuck with due to LLVM's Intel syntax support being untested and buggy.

• Ability for tighter integration with Zig code that could do things such as automatically determining clobbers.

• Maybe it's not so bad to reduce dependency on LLVM. This would bring us closer to a fully self hosted toolchain and make it possible to experiment with bypassing LLVM in debug mode for faster builds.

So I think this proposal is at least worth considering. There will have to be a decision before releasing 1.0.0.