[gnu.gcc] I'M CONFUSED!!

jkh@pcsbst.UUCP (jkh) (03/28/89)

I've just finished porting GAS 1.31 to a system V of dubious parentage
and now would like to make everything work with this "COFF ENCAPSULATION"
feature I keep seeing in the binutils. Ok, so, gas is compiled for a "generic"
68020 and all the binutils are compiled with "COFF_ENCAPSULATION" defined
and the appropriate magic number value poked in where it says to poke
it in for my machine. I do a68 some_file.s -o some_file.o and get a
.o file. When I use a binutil like "nm" to try and look at it,
it says that it's not a relocatable object or archive. The binutil ld
says the same thing. "Hmmmmm.", says I. I never told gas to generate
special .o files for this, I guess that it's generating berkeley
style objects (my "file" command doesn't identify it as a COFF object).

Hmmmmm. Let's see. I *want* berkeley style symbol information in my
executables so that I can use gdb3.1's nifty incremental symbol table
loading, but do my objects need this too? I would guess so.. Do they
also need a COFF wrapper? Who puts it on? Not gas, as far as I can see,
which hasn't got a COFF define anywhere in it. How does this
encapsulation stuff work? Who gets compiled with what?

Help, Mr. Wizard!

					Jordan Hubbard
					jkh@violet.berkeley.edu