Xenix files..

[pgd at bbt.se]

In article <1990Dec31.005602.7520 at robobar.co.uk> ronald at robobar.co.uk (Ronald S H Khoo) writes:
>Someone once posted a Xenix system call library, and there's Earl Chew's
>stdio, and lots of fragments to replace most of the unix libc.a
>scattered about the net (especially in the BSD directory on uunet :-)

And don't you get /shlib/libc_s with the base system? Quite a lot of
the system library is there. You only need a x.out to coff converter,
to use it. I might post such a one, if anyone is interested.

I have not checked, but don't you need the c-compiler to compiler c.c
in the link kit? If so, you have everything in the base system.

I used to use gcc with the gnu loader, and my system call library,
before the gnu OMF kit was out. But sometimes i regret that I changed,
and did not make an OMF to a.out converter instead. Especially when I
discovered that the Microsoft linker does not correctly link up jumps
to absolute addresses, I became quite fried with it.

ld also outputs wrong code when used with the GDB debugger.
Especially when the load module reaches 1MB size. The linker just
scrambles the segment table, and the segment image... Try using GDB
for something big, and you will get the surprise.

>So I think you *gotta* admit that you *can* get enough of a development
>system for free.  Perhaps someone ought to sit down and integrate this
>whole thing -- I haven't time.  Anyway, the very idea of a Unix without
>compiler is ridiculous.  But then, so's the idea of Unix without source.

I agree fully. I have never so far used a computer for which one of the
first programs needed is not a disassembler -- just to figure out the
arguments to the undocumented system calls, or something else "legal".
(On the first operating system i encountered, all system calls were
undocumented :-( ).