Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!lll-winken!ames!uhccux!bt455s10
From: bt455s10@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Carl "Art" McIntosh)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.i386
Subject: Re: Cheapest way to Unix program developement
Summary: GUN cc,as,ld on the 386
Keywords: Unix, GNUCC, GCC, 386
Message-ID: <6146@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 13 Jan 90 03:49:59 GMT
References: <1271@island.uu.net> <2711@draken.nada.kth.se>
Reply-To: bt455s10@uhccux.UUCP (Carl "Art" McIntosh)
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 10

In a nutshell, yes you can use the GNU cc, as, ld utilities on the
386 platform, but there's a catch ... since GNU *does not* support
COFF, you must feed your COFF C libraries to the *robotussin*
utility found in the GNU binutils.  Robotussin supports *encapsulated COFF*,
which is basically COFF hidden inside a BSD wrapper. This will make
your libraries unusable by the stock cc in the development system,
converting to GNU as and ld is a total committment.  You *can* have
gcc use the system's ld thereby eliminating the need for robotussin,
alas this means no GUN ld, as etc .. it's a tradeoff each GNU user
must partake ...