[Fwd: let's talk]

[Emmanuel Marty]

I forward this here, as Samuel isn't subscribed to the mailing
list yet..

--
Emmanuel

"Samuel A. Falvo II" wrote:
> 
> > Do you mind if we use tunes-lll in the meantime?
> 
> If you're going to do this, how does one sign up?  I too would like to be on
> the XCOM 98 Consortium.  :-)
> 
> BTW: My name is Samuel Anthony Falvo II, so the "L" for a middle name was
> incorrect.  But that's just a cosmetic "bug"; the functionality is still
> there.  In case you forget, just remember I'm one of those annoying,
> migrating Italians.  ;-D
> 
> Also, is Andreas Beck going to be joining us in this venture?  I saw he had
> a few words of input to the XCOM Specificationt too.  Not sure if he'll be
> interested or not, seeing as how he's involved with GGI and all.
> 
> Also, can you send me your kgi.xcom file?  I'd like to see how that is
> structured, what symbols are imported/exported, etc.  The goal with this is
> to (a) test my linker, and (b) have a template to port KGI to Dolphin (it
> seems easy enough, but I still wonder if something's missing).
> 
> An older, but working, version is OK.
> 
> > Tom, Sam: I want to change two things in XCOM. 1) the architecture
> > description string is useless. It's not used by anything important
> > right now, so I'd like to discuss an useful way. 2) the
> 
> Thank you for bringing this up so soon -- XLink is basically a loader right
> now (See?  I *AM* making progress!), due to lack of time.  I should have it
> reading in fixup records and coalescing sections by the end of next week (I
> hope) or the week after.  I will definately need to know how to handle
> INTERFACE sections by that time.  If not, that's OK -- I can always go back
> and change it (and pulling my hair out in the process!  :-) ).
> 
> I plan on extracting the first two passes of the linker for the purposes of
> writing a 'XRun' command, which allows one to load and run an XCOM
> executable (usage is similar to su under Linux; "xrun ls.xcom" for
> instance).
> 
> *WARNING*
> 
> DO NOT run xlink when trying to link 16MB XCOM components.  More likely than
> not, you will run out of memory!  :-)  xlink works by loading all program
> sections into RAM, then loading relocation records, coalescing them in RAM
> (no realloc() or memory copying, so it's fast), and then writing the final
> result from the coalesced sections.
> 
> > interface section, I would like to find a way to make it so that
> > the linker can do fixup inside it, and still not have to know
> > the format used by the OS it is destined to. That should
> > be relatively simple, as only Clementine has interfaces right
> > now, and I can break them as much as I like.
> 
> Why not just use relocation records?  Does an XCOM_SECTYPE_INTERFACE section
> need symbol exports?  I must be missing something important about INTERFACE
> sections.  :-)
> 
> > XCOM doesn't support position-independent code right now but
> > it will sometime soon.
> 
> Could have fooled me.  The fixups alone make code position independent upon
> loading.  As far as run-time relocation (ie., having floating chunks of code
> during run-time), I personally don't see the utility in that.  We might want
> to consider making some portions of XCOM "Optional Extensions," just as the
> TCP and IP protocols have optional extensions.
> 
> > * SGML'ing the documentation
> 
> I'd like to add "Better Documentation" into this as well.  The existing
> documentation does not yet address the issues which I've raised with you in
> the past, with the exception of the formal meaning of xc_int64 datatype, nor
> the issues which will be discussed in the future on the XCOM development
> list. Perhaps we should wait on this...
> 
> We should also re-evaluate the include file xcom.h too -- it seems to have
> Clementine-specific definitions present, if only just a few.  :-)
> 
> > * Writing an XCOM loader as an usermode program for POSIX OS'es.
> 
> This is what lead to the development of XLink, actually,  I wanted to try
> and make a loader, but I realized that I needed a linker first.  And since
> they both share a good portion fo the code, I figured working on the linker
> first would assist in the writing of the loader.
> 
> If someone else wants to take up the task of the loader, that's fine by me
> -- less code I have to write!  :-)
> 
> > * Writing an XCOM loader for the Linux kernel, as a 'misc
> >   loader' module? That shouldn't be too hard, and should
> >   nicely insert as a module with no need to patch the
> >   base kernel.. This would also probably require designing a
> >   small 'INTERFACE' section for it.
> 
> An interesting idea.  I wasn't aware such an interface even existed in Linux.
> 
> ==========================================================================
>       KC5TJA/6     |                  -| TEAM DOLPHIN |-
>         DM13       |                  Samuel A. Falvo II
>     QRP-L #1447    |          http://www.dolphin.openprojects.net
>    Oceanside, CA   |......................................................