Date: Tue, 31 Dec 1996 17:10:27 +0200 (IST)
From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il>
To: Ray Duncan <Duncan AT voicenet DOT com>
cc: djgpp AT delorie DOT com, Robert Hoehne <robert DOT hoehne AT mathematik DOT tu-chemnitz DOT de>,
        DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>
Subject: Re: go32 stub
In-Reply-To: <5a8j9n$ip2@news1.voicenet.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.961231164829.15011C-100000@is>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII


On Mon, 30 Dec 1996, Ray Duncan wrote:

> When I strip an executable that has the 10/26/96 version of the stub.
> I get an 08/26/96 version of the stub for that executable (See below for
> the details).
> It seems to me that strip has an 08/26/96 stub contained in it that it uses
> when it strips an executable.

Yes, `strip' (and all the rest of Binutils) were originally compiled with
an older stub built into them, and I guess they weren't recompiled when
the stub was changed in the last stages of beta-testing. 

>         1) Does this create a problem

It might, although only in rare cases.  But I suggest to not use `strip' 
at all on .exe programs, since it currently writes the stripped program 
with the default stub info (like minstack and the rest; use `stubedit' to 
see all the fields), so if you stubedit a program and then strip it, your 
edited stub is gone!  So my advice is to strip the COFF file and then 
stubify it, like so:

		gcc -g -o prog prog.c <... rest of modules here ...>
		strip prog
		stubify prog

(note "gcc -o prog", not "gcc -o prog.exe"), or, if you only have a .exe,
like so: 

		exe2coff prog.exe
		strip prog
		stubify prog

There is another way to use `strip' on .exe programs and get the latest 
stub (see below) but IMHO it is too cumbersome and error-prone to be a 
general solution for most of the users.

>         2) Why does it do this?

Because GNU Binutils need to know about the structure of DJGPP stubified
exe-style programs in order to create them, read the info (sections etc.)
from them, transform them to other supported binary formats, etc.  The
current implementation is to put the stub inside the GNU BFD (binary file
description) library which is used by Binutils and GDB.  As an
alternative, you can set the environment variable STUB to point to the
pathname of the stub that you want to be used instead.  A modified version
of `strip' which can read the stub from the program being stripped (and
thus copy the original stub intact) should be available when Robert 
Hoehne (who ported Binutils 2.7 to DJGPP) has time to do that.