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From: Leisner.Henr@xerox.com (Marty)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: COFF linker features/questions
Message-ID: <20043@adm.BRL.MIL>
Date: 19 Jun 89 12:55:28 GMT
Sender: news@adm.BRL.MIL
Lines: 26

I've used a number of COFF linkers/cross-linkers and found the command
language they support very handy for building embedded systems.

Not all COFF linkers support this command language -- i.e. the sun386i is a
COFF based machine which doesn't appear to support this command langauge.

How would conventional Berkeley-style linkers support the features found in
the COFF command language (i.e. binding variables to addresses at link
time).  Or are the features absent?

Is it reasonable for a  single COFF linker binary to support various
targets?  It seems the linker (and the various binary related tools -- i.e.
nm) and libld) routines could somehow configure at runtime based on magic
numbers to take care of the byte order problems.

It is a real pain to have to have a full set of  differentbinaries to
support each target architecture in cross-development work.  I thought one
of the goals of coff was to support multiple architectures with common
tools.  

marty
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