Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!phri!marob!daveh
From: daveh@marob.MASA.COM (Dave Hammond)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: COFF binaries under 2.3 Dev Sys.
Message-ID: <612@marob.MASA.COM>
Date: 10 Apr 89 13:49:36 GMT
Reply-To: daveh@marob.masa.com (Dave Hammond)
Organization: ESCC  New York City
Lines: 28

There were 2 primary reasons why I felt it worth upgrading from the
2.2 Dev Sys (distributed with 2.3.1), and the 2.3 Dev Sys.  The first
was an improved Curses port (and it is).  The second was "COFF compatibility".

After upgrading to 2.3, and scouring *all* available docs, the only occurances
of the pattern "COFF" which I found, were on the ld(C) man page, where it
states that COFF objects are transparently linked with Xenix binaries, and
on the directory(S) man page, where it states that the -ldir set of directory
functions must be used to produce COFF-compatible binaries.

Nowhere does it state that 2.3 allows you to *produce* a COFF-compatible
object file!  Not only that, SCO tech support (NOT to reduce this to
a SCO tech support flame fest) informed me that they had no information
about producing COFF objects; had never had any inquiries about that
subject; and it was probably a marketting "future consideration" issue,
at best.  Thank you very much.

Is there anyone else on the net who feels that producing COFF-compatible
binaries should be higher on SCO's list of priorities, than a "marketting
future consideration"?

For the first time in 4 years, I am actively pursuing a non-SCO Intel/Unix
environment.  A copy of 386/ix with VPIX and X-Windows arrives here shortly.
(I guess its time to "g comp.unix.i386" :-\)

--
Dave Hammond
daveh@marob.masa.com