Xref: utzoo comp.unix.xenix:5021 comp.unix.microport:2849
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!batcomputer!itsgw!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.microport
Subject: Re: UNIX assemblers and SCO
Keywords: compatible?
Message-ID: <13163@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 16 Feb 89 19:00:25 GMT
References: <647@cimcor.mn.org>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Distribution: usa
Organization: General Electric CRD, Schenectady, NY
Lines: 39

In article <647@cimcor.mn.org> mike@cimcor.mn.org (Michael Grenier) writes:

| .............................. I have a BIG fear that the rumored
| MASM like assembler SCO uses will not handle the UNIX assembler's
| opcodes and directives and will therefore not assemble the output
| of the pascal compiler.

  I'm not sure what you mean by "rumored." It's been shipping for over a
year. It is not the standard UNIX assembler.
| 
| Is it true that SCO will not support the standard UNIX V.3 assembler?
| It would be disappointing to have SCO doing something different again.

  Define "support." SCO supports the UNIX assembler in the same way that
MS-DOS supports 1-2-3. You're welcome to run it if you wish. Programs
using COFF format seem to run just fine under the recent versions of
Xenix. SCO doesn't *sell* that assembler, just as IBM doesn't supply
1-2-3.

  Let's take a hypothetical case (to avoid violating our license). If we
had Xenix/386 v2.3.1 and Microport v/386, and pulled the executables off
the Microport and put them on the Xenix system, with a little
hypothetical diddling the assembler would work just fine.

  It's not clear to me that SCO will ever offer the V.3 C compiler and
assembler, which is too bad because they could do so easily and bundle
it with the development set. The only reason I can see to use it is
compatibility at the assembler source level. Any reasonable C program
will run fine on either compiler, but faster after compilation on the
Xenix compiler in most cases. 

  It's not really a lot of work to generate source for one or the other,
and would probably be worth doing from a standpoint of potential
customers. You could bundle your compiler with the assembler if you
wanted, since the user has to buy it from someone it might as well be you.
-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@ge-crd.arpa)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me