14 Jan
2020
14 Jan
'20
4:53 a.m.
On Mon, 13 Jan 2020 at 16:43, Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> wrote:
OSF/1 on MIPS used ECOFF by default, but at least some versions could also
create and run ELF executables. That was all early to mid 1992, I
believe. I don't have my DECstation up right now to check but I'm sure
that the OSF/1 2.0 beta can do it, and I wouldn't be surprised if the
versions of 1.0 with the v3.0 compiler could also do it. I remember trying
to do ELF shared libraries but I think that support wasn't ready yet, which
is a shame because the ECOFF shared libraries on that platform are not fun
to deal with. Not as bad as SGI's ECOFF shared libraries on IRIX 4
though. I'm not sure if anyone outside of SGI ever bothered to put in the
work required to make one.
Wasn't OSF's original intent to use the OSF/ROSE object format?
-Henry
Now my memory is a little hazy... I think
OSF/1-386 used MachO
originally,
but I've forgotten. Switching the kernel
to use ELF was one of the
differences between OSF1 and Tru64 IIRC.
GEM never had to support Mach-O on any of its target platforms. DEC's
Unix on MIPS used COFF. Tru64 used ELF exclusively. I don't know
what Apple used for object files before OS X. IIRC NeXT was based on
the CMU MACH microkernel and hence used Mach-O. OS X is
FreeBSD-based, but it uses Mach-O.