2014-07-02 20:11 GMT+02:00 John Maddock <boost.regex@virgin.net>:
I think the issue here is why should users need to install MASM when they're using GCC and have a perfectly good assembler already (as)?

because it is to much work to provide an assembler file for each assembler tool avaialble - but you is welcome to port the code from masm syntax to GNU as syntax.
 
Besides I'm not sure that the assumption that a MASM produced assembly is always compatible with GCC-Mingw is a valid one - it may well be sometimes, but I think it depends how Mingw is built and configured - I'm not completely sure about though.

the binary format is defined by the underlying ABI