From: Nigel Stephens <nigel AT algor DOT co DOT uk>
Date: Thu, 8 Dec 1994 13:32:08 GMT
To: mat AT ardi DOT com (Mat Hostetter)
Cc: Charles Sandmann <sandmann AT new-orleans DOT NeoSoft DOT com>,
        djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu, elf AT netcom DOT com (Marc Singer)
Subject: Re: object file format change?
References: <199412070300 DOT TAA16379 AT netcom14 DOT netcom DOT com>
	<199412071426 DOT IAA03178 AT new-orleans DOT NeoSoft DOT com>
	<m0rFb5d-000GPyC AT gwar DOT ardi DOT com>

Mat Hostetter (mat AT ardi DOT com ) writes:
 > First, some background: at ARDI we build the DOS version of our
 > product (Executor) under linux, using cross-compilation tools and the
 > djgpp libraries and headers.  This was easy to set up and works
 > extremely well.

Yes we do the same, under BSD/386 rather than Linux.  In fact any Unix
system that can run gcc can (fairly) easily be configured to build a
cross-compiler using --target=i386-go32.  Linux is a red herring:
there all sorts of different Unix systems (e.g. FreeBSD) with
different native object code formats, why should we choose to be
"compatible" with Linux only?

 > Charles's second point is a good one.  The ability to use V2 to build
 > Windows apps would be _enormously_ useful to us, and I suspect to many
 > other people as well.  This would fundamentally improve the power of
 > djgpp, and switching to ELF would not.

And when Windoze95/Chicago eventually arrives, how much longer will
vanilla MSDOS survive: Chicago runs 32-bit NT/COFF executables too.
Although I think that ELF is a much more elegant format (we use it
ourselves for our tools), it looks like compilers whose primary
emphasis is DOS (and therefore soon Chicago) should standardise on
NT-compatible COFF.  It is a golden opportunity that Microsoft picked
an object code format which is easily supported by the GNU tools.

Products like Toolbuster use GCC to provide a Unix compiler and
run-time environment for NT/Chicago, but you have to pay for them.  It
would be great if DJGPP could form the basis of a free alternative.

-- 
 _________________________________________________________________________
 Nigel Stephens, Algorithmics Ltd, 3 Drayton Park, London, N5 1NU, England
 phone: +44 171 700 3301   fax: +44 171 700 3400  email: nigel AT algor DOT co DOT uk