Message-ID: <329C25EB.6DF1@pobox.oleane.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:28:43 +0100
From: Francois Charton <deef AT pobox DOT oleane DOT com>
Organization: CCMSA
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Robert Hoehne <Robert DOT Hoehne AT Mathematik DOT tu-chemnitz DOT de>
CC: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject: Re: a.out format and objcopy
References: <329B8876 DOT 2AA3 AT pobox DOT oleane DOT com> <329C1C36 DOT 133D AT Mathematik DOT tu-chemnitz DOT de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Robert Hoehne wrote:
>
> 
> I made the aout support ONLY for the poeple, who use the
> povray program, which is currently (as far as I know) the only program
> for
> DJGPP which mixes two different object formats. After getting success
> with
> building povray by extracting the aout object files from the library and
> linking them explicit I will not spend more time for that old object
> format.
>

Actually, povray uses aout because some borland compiled .obj files it 
uses were convered using EMXAOUT. A while ago, DJ suggested using OBJCOPY 
to translate these AOUT files into COFF format, so that they can be 
linked into .a libraries, and the ld failure is overcome. But as OBJCOPY 
is a part of Binutils, and hence also uses BFD, if the problem is with 
the BFD, then this solution is of no avail...

Still, I am uncomfortable with this BFD-bug explanation: a previous 
version of ld (in Binutils 2.4), managed to link aout formats... Didn't 
it also use BFD?

> If you realy need this feature, get the sources for binutils 2.7 and try
> to
> solve the problem by analizing the source files. But I think it would be
> a
> betther way, to see, if there is any other program to convert the .obj
> files
> direct to COFF format and NOT to aout.
> 
>

I'll try to work on the aout BFD, does anyone here have a description of 
the aout format???

As regards other converters, I know one, OBJ2COFF, but you cannot use it 
for commercial programs...

Thanks,
Francois