# Recommended Tools

You do not need any of these tools to program in Phix, or even modify the compiler itself, but they may make life somewhat easier, especially if you plan to roll up your sleeves and dig around in the deepest darkest parts of the Phix runtime (inline assembly). This is of course a "dip into as needed" list of my favourites, rather than a suggestion to "go and grab all of these today". No doubt more will be added in due course. Obviously if any links are broken please try using your favourite search engine.
7-zip - Quite simply the best file compression utility ever. Used in phixzip.bat should you want to share a modified version of Phix.
FASM - If you want to learn assembly programming, get this fast self hosted assembler (Windows and Linux). Also, the help file is a useful companion to using Phix inline assembly.
FDBG - 64 bit debugger, open source, written in FASM. I use the non-UEFI (whatever that means) Windows one. See also OllyDbg.
http://www.virustotal.com - Online virus scanner with over 40 scanning engines. Alternatives include http://www.metascan-online.com and http://virusscan.jotti.org. Never ship a program without testing it on one of these or somewhere similar first. Instead of a browser addon or website form, you can use one of the six email addresses listed below to have suspected files scanned for you, or all six if it is raining and you are a bit bored. Results of a virus scan are emailed back to the sender.
McAfee: virus_research@mcafee.com - Compress into a ZIP file with "infected" as the password
Avira: virus@avira.com - Compress the files to any archive format and specify the password in the email
VirusTotal: scan@virustotal.com - Files up to 32MB. Use "SCAN" in the subject line to get a plain text reply or "SCAN+XML" for XML format
eScan: samples@escanav.com - Pack the files in a ZIP or RAR file type secured with a password and include the password in the email
Sophos: samples@sophos.com - Use "Sample submitted for analysis" as the subject of the email. Password protect files in ZIP format with password in body of message
Norman Safeground: helpdesk@norman.com - Pack files into a ZIP archive with the password "infected"
Note that the ever increasing rate of malware production has forced AV makers to adopt "heuristic" and "reputation" based mechanisms, with an unavoidable hike in false positives, and is the lastest bane of many a developer. While submission may or may not achieve miracles, not doing so guarantees things can never be fixed, and obviously posting duplicates or more than one new problem a week is unlikely to help.