From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 13467 invoked by alias); 6 Aug 2010 08:29:06 -0000 Received: (qmail 13458 invoked by uid 22791); 6 Aug 2010 08:29:05 -0000 X-SWARE-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.8 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_00,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,RCVD_IN_JMF_BL,SPF_SOFTFAIL X-Spam-Check-By: sourceware.org Received: from mtaout22.012.net.il (HELO mtaout22.012.net.il) (80.179.55.172) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.43rc1) with ESMTP; Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:29:00 +0000 Received: from conversion-daemon.a-mtaout22.012.net.il by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) id <0L6Q0080024AHD00@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for gdb@sourceware.org; Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:28:40 +0300 (IDT) Received: from HOME-C4E4A596F7 ([77.126.102.143]) by a-mtaout22.012.net.il (HyperSendmail v2007.08) with ESMTPA id <0L6Q008L527RAS40@a-mtaout22.012.net.il> for gdb@sourceware.org; Fri, 06 Aug 2010 11:28:40 +0300 (IDT) Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2010 08:29:00 -0000 From: Eli Zaretskii Subject: Platforms using COFF? To: gdb@sourceware.org Reply-to: Eli Zaretskii Message-id: <83lj8kw3ep.fsf@gnu.org> X-IsSubscribed: yes Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2010-08/txt/msg00040.txt.bz2 I'm sorry for posting a slightly off-topic question, but I think this forum has many people who know about what I'd like to ask: are there any current or future platforms that use, or can be reasonably expected to use, the COFF format for their binary files? Background: Emacs has a bunch of implementation of unexec, one each for every ABI used by platforms that Emacs can be built on. (unexec is a method of generating an executable binary file from an in-memory image of a running program.) There are, for example, unexelf.c for ELF, unexw32.c for pe-coff, etc. There's also unexcoff.c (renamed yesterday from unexec.c), which was the original implementation supporting a.out and COFF. Nowadays, it is used only by the MSDOS (a.k.a. DJGPP) build of Emacs. The main issue is this: since only the MSDOS build uses unexcoff.c, I was asked to clean it up of code that is #ifdef'ed away for the DOS build. My question is: can we reasonably assume that no future platform where it makes sense to build Emacs will ever want to use COFF? If some modern low-end platforms (e.g., some mobile ones) use or could use COFF, then perhaps some of the code currently unused by the DOS build should be left in unexcoff.c, for the benefit of these platforms. TIA