[Info-vax] Reimplementing VMS, was: Re: HP adds OpenVMS Mature Product Support beyond the end of Standard Support

[hb]

On 02/04/2014 04:42 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> The other big part of the work involved is an overhauled or wholly new
> linker, the debugger, ANALYZE /IMAGE, ANALYZE /OBJECT, process dump
> support, the image activator, the SET IMAGE command, the librarian, and
> a few other hunks that know about objects and images.

When ELF/DWARF is used, I don't think that there is a need for a "wholly
new" linker: the main change would be to understand and generate a
new/different set of relocations/fixups. The unwind stuff is probably
different, too. And if there need to be trampolines: a couple of new
instructions. ANALYZE /IMAGE and ANALYZE /OBJECT need to know about what
will be new for the linker as well and may need to understand the new
instruction set for disassembling. The latter is/can be common code with
the debugger/process dump/SDA. The image activator needs to understand
the linker generated new relocations/fixups. On the other hand, then
neither librarian nor SET IMAGE need to be changed.

For objects and images this sure is a smaller project than going from
the Alpha object/image format to ELF.