From: D V Henkel-Wallace (gumby@tweedledumb.cygnus.com)
Date: 03/09/93


From: gumby@tweedledumb.cygnus.com (D V Henkel-Wallace)
Subject: Binary compatibility with other *nix
Date: 9 Mar 1993 10:26:57


   Date: 8 Mar 93 21:10:02 GMT
   From: mcdermot@pele.cs.unm.edu (John McDermott)

   According to *Open Systems Today* 1 March issue, Borland, IBM, Intel, Lotus,
   MetaWare, Microsoft, SCO and Watcom announced the formation of The Tool
   Interface Standards committee. They have (ver 1.0 of) a spec for binary
   compatability. The article goes on tos say that it is ELF or OMF
   and debugging standards are DWARF (un*x) and STI (Windoze NT). OST claims
   the spec is free (but they don't give a source!). Mabye we should consider
   starting there. It would be a shot in the arm for free software if Linux
   were the first to comply...

NT is COFF, which already has strong BFD support. The ELF support has
recently been upgraded, so....the big one is an OMF module for BFD.
Any takers?

Supporting NT would open a wonderful opportunity to take some wind out
of microsoft's sails (and sales?). Plus doing it right would be a
great "up-yours!" for the useless POSIX support in NT.