Date:	Sat, 21 Sep 1996 18:47:35 -0400
From:	dj (DJ Delorie)
Message-Id:	<199609212247.SAA16086@delorie.com>
To:	sandmann AT clio DOT rice DOT edu
CC:	djgpp-workers AT delorie DOT com, kendallb AT scitechsoft DOT com
In-reply-to:	<9609212220.AA13797@clio.rice.edu> (sandmann@clio.rice.edu)
Subject:	Re: [KendallB AT scitechsoft DOT com: (Fwd) PoV-Ray compiling with DJGPP2.01]

> Not clear at all, based on the messages you get currently.  Unless
> someone modifies them to say "a.out not supported, recompile your
> libraries".

True, but at least it will stop people from spending hours trying to
track down a bogus pointer bug.

> V1.x compiled code except for the libc (which had changes in
> globals) and some calls to libc routines (IOB, etc) work just fine
> under V2.x.

So far, nearly all the V1 code breaks because of these.  I haven't
heard anyone say "but *my* V1 library works without recompiling!"

> Is there some compelling reason to break the .OBJ to .O tool which
> has been provided (just because it's a.out?)

No, but it was developed long after djgpp switched to COFF.  It should
have been COFF from the start.

> Are we now trying to discourage commercial development with DJGPP?

This is uncalled for.  There's a lot in V1 that we no longer support
because it's not appropriate to support it.  We can't be 100%
backwards compatible.  Every time we drop support for something,
someone somewhere will complain.  We don't still support 0xd0000000,
do we?  That was a *popular* one, too.

Let Kendall decide if they can or can't make the changes to support
COFF in their converter.  If they find it too difficult, and that
difficulty combined with the popularity of their package warrants
supporting an object format that hasn't been used by djgpp for years
(4? 5?), we'll revisit the issue.

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