Re: [9fans] Good enough approximation for ape/pcc

["Russ Cox" <rsc@swtch.com>]

> i've considered this.  would it be too much trouble to convert plan 9 object
> files to elf? or to write a plan9-to-elf converter?

this always seems like a good idea at first but is not,
as least as a solution for plan 9 from user space.

one of the main goals of p9p is to play nice with the
local system.  if you're going to do that you need to
be able to link with the local system libraries, which
means knowing the local system's calling convention,
object file formats, etc.  also debugging format so that
you can generate debuggable binaries.

plan 9 386 .8 files (just to take an example, any architecture
will do) look nothing like unix .o files, so it's not like
you could just change the compiler to generate .o either.
you'd have to merge 8c and 8l into a single program just
to generate a traditional unix .o, and then use the system
linker or maybe write your own.

that's not what i would call a portable system.  better to
have ansi c copies of the source and just use the system
compiler in the first place.  much less to maintain.

the work might be worth it if you were building your own
operating system and wanted it to use a non-gcc compiler
suite.  but at that point you could just load plan 9 binaries
instead of elf binaries and be done.

russ