How would you design a new a.out format?

Bruce Perens bp at pixar.uucp
Fri May 13 07:38:46 AEST 1988


Recent net discussion has pointed out the deficiencies in the BSD a.out
format with extensions for DBX, and the ATT COFF format. Source-level
debugging, new languages, resource managers, run-time-linking, and
shared libraries make special demands on the a.out format.
Extensibility of existing Unix a.out formats has been a problem.

What do you want from a new a.out format?
How would you implement one?

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Bruce Perens - Pixar, Marin County, Ca. 415-258-8167
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