Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!arktouros!dyer
From: dyer@arktouros.mit.edu (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: ABI a.out format used with NeXT
Message-ID: <7558@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>
Date: 19 Oct 88 16:36:57 GMT
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Reply-To: dyer@arktouros.mit.edu (Steve Dyer)
Organization: MIT Project Athena, Cambridge MA 02139
Lines: 19

One question that just occurred to me, and wasn't asked publically
at the "NeXT Day", was whether the NeXT/Mach a.out format for executable
binaries was the same as the Sun.  Was it not the case that 4.3BSD
VAX binaries ran unmodified under Mach on the VAX?  Is it not the
case that Sun OS 68K binaries (at least < 4.0) run unmodified under
Mach on the Sun 3 series?  (These are real questions, not just rhetoric.)
If this is so, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to support the Sun OS
a.out object format and system call interface?  Granted, programs which
make heavy use of SunView or X11 or whatever won't run, but for your
unadorned programs like Fortran compilers, etc., which expect a glass
TTY interface, this would be an enormous win.  Imagine allowing most
of the existing Sun binaries to be used on the NeXT machine.  The
market synergy is almost too much to resist.

Any comments from the knowledgable?
---
Steve Dyer
dyer@arktouros.MIT.EDU
dyer@spdcc.COM aka {harvard,husc6,ima,bbn,m2c,mipseast}!spdcc!dyer