[net.micro.atari16] .o file format description wanted

sandra@utah-cs.UUCP (07/16/86)

Does *anybody* know the format of the .o files produced by the DRI C
compiler/assembler?  The developer's kit doesn't appear to contain
any information about this.  Please, if you have a description of the
format, let the rest of us in on it too!

-Sandra Loosemore (sandra@utah-cs)

tarvydas@utcsri.UUCP (Paul Tarvydas) (07/18/86)

It turns out that the .o format IS documented - DRI CP/M 68K manual,
section 3 "Command File Format".  It's similar to Unix in that the
executable format is the same as the object format, except that
the symbols have been resolved and possibly stripped out.  "Relmod"
does some further processing, but this is after everything has been linked,
and I haven't bothered to finger out what it's effect is.

You can easily identify the sections of a .o file described in the
manual by using "dump.prg" on some (small) .o file.  As far as I can
tell, the symbol types "defined", "equated" and "equated register"
are possibly white elephants - they're probably used as flags by
the assembler, then the whole symbol table is just dumped out to
the .o file; but, I haven't investigated that thoroughly yet, so
don't stake your life on it.

Send me mail if you want to discuss it further - I'm still exploring.

Paul Tarvydas
Tarvydas-Sanford Controls Inc.
...{ihnp4|...}!utcsri!tarvydas