Subject: Have 4.4BSD a.out "hello, world": where now?
To: None <port-pmax@sun-lamp.cs.berkeley.edu>
From: Jonathan Stone <jonathan@DSG.Stanford.EDU>
List: port-pmax
Date: 08/31/1994 14:57:39
I've used GNU gas-2.3 and GNU binutils-2.3, configured and compiled
(hosted) on a Decstation with Ultrix, targeted for a "mips-dec-bsd"
(i.e., 4.4SBD a.out format), and gcc 2.5.8 configured for a
DECstation, running on a 3MAX running NetBSD in Ultrix emulation mode,
to build a libc.a, and compiled and linked a "hello, world: program,
using "gcc -mgas -nostdinc" and native NetBSD header files..

I'm not sure what I should munge in the kernel to get some
(temporary, throw-away) support for executing 4.4BSD a.out binaries,
with native NetBSD libraries and system calls, to run.
If I knew _exactly_ what I needed to change in the a.out header
to get the binaries to run native, I'd write a GNU BFD back-end
to support that.

Do I just need  to apply ntohl() to the first 32 bits of the a.out
header, or is more work needed?

I know enough about BFD that it's faster, for _me_, to take that path
than to put time into porting whatever the standard NetBSD tools are
to run on a pmax.

Did someone out there have 4.4BSD binaries running on a NetBSD
kernel? Or vice-versa?

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