From: Andris Pavenis <pavenis AT latnet DOT lv>
To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com, Charles Sandmann <sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu>
Subject: Re: ANNOUNCE: Release 5 of DJGPP port of fileutils 4.1
Date: Tue, 21 Jan 2003 09:05:50 +0200
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Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com

On Tuesday 21 January 2003 06:03, Charles Sandmann wrote:
> > I am using UPX 1.24d.  After downloading release 5 of the file
> > utilities I was surprised to find the entire batch of 21 executable
> > files could not be compressed.
> >
> >      "CantPackException: unsupported coff header."
> >
> > If this is the direction that DJGPP 2.04 is taking, I hope that
> > cooperation will result in a quick resolution of this difficulty.
>
> This is some conflict between the new binutils and UPX.  Someone
> needs to diagnose the problem and provide a fix (either to the
> UPX maintainers or to the binutils maintainers).  This problem has
> been discussed on the djgpp-workers list, but no one has both the
> time and motivation to track it down and fix it.
>
> I'm personally very unhappy about this (if it were me, I would
> continue to use the old binutils because of this) - but whoever builds
> the packages gets to decide which toolkit to use.

One can try to use UPX-1.23. It doesn't complain, but after unpacking DJGPP 
executable packed with it fails to work. This is only weird effect I have 
observed with using UPX-1.23 together with executables built using new GCC 
and binutils versions, but who knows - maybe some else and worse problem is 
lurking for victim.

Executables of some of DJGPP packages I uploaded were compressed with 
UPX-1.23 and had this problem, but I haven't read complains here yet. It's 
only, that they stop working if unpacked. 

When I reported this, some additional test were added, so UPX-1.24 (and if I 
remeber correctly also 1.90 beta) simply reject to compress such executables.

Andris