From: muta...@gmail.com   
      
   On Thursday, January 6, 2022 at 2:40:30 AM UTC+11, James Harris wrote:   
      
   > After a long absence from OS development I recently returned to it - and   
   > it feels great to be doing this stuff again!!! The reason for the   
   > absence (other than life!) was that I was developing a language to write   
   > the OS in.   
      
   What's wrong with C?   
      
   > What formats of image file are best for the OS itself?   
      
   a.out is simple, and what I use for historical reasons.   
   I have fixed a bug in binutils 2.14a that was stopping   
   relocation from being generated.   
      
   I'll probably switch to PE at some point though, for   
   consistency with other executables that I run.   
      
   In either case, I always load to a fixed address, so I   
   may as well produce a flat binary, so that is what I   
   am likely to do.   
      
   > Elf and PE have the opposite problem. Either of them should be easy to   
   > create but how would one invoke the image? Options:   
   >   
   > 2a. Extract the executable part (how?) for inclusion in the loadable image.   
      
   You will need the same logic as a loader. Public domain   
   code is available here for both:   
      
   https://sourceforge.net/p/pdos/gitcode/ci/master/tree/bios/exeload.c   
      
   > 2b. Include the whole executable file, including the headers, and write   
   > some asm code to parse the headers and jump to the executable part of it.   
      
   Why can't you write 16-bit C code to do that instead   
   of assembler? That's what I do. If I had my time again   
   I would write it using the huge memory model of   
   Watcom C instead.   
      
   BFN. Paul.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)