Re: IBM S/370 and binutils

[linas at linas dot org]

Hi David,

It's been rumoured that David and Jannette Uczen said:
> 
> If EM_I370 is different from Amdahl's ABI, wouldn't it be better to change
> i370 to conform to Amdahl's?

When I wrote this thing, I was not aware that Amdahl had defined an
ELF ABI.  I would like to ask you to help me get specs for the thing.
Certainly, I can't make any changes without the specs.

If Amdahl's ABI is old, inefficient, or doesn't support dynamic
linking/shared libs, then this would be an occasion to abandon old
problems.   This does not mean that you or I or someone else could not
also create the parts needed to adhere to Amdahl's ABI and add them to
gcc & gas. It just means that there is room for two ABI's if that 
seems appropriate.

If I get a copy of the spec's, I will pour through them and try
to match what they've done with what I have in place.  If it seems 
close, I'll volunteer to make at least the initial changes to bring 
them in line.  In order of effort, from least to greatest:

-- stack layout
-- static linkage and register conventions
-- dynamic linkage mechanisms
-- new assembler directives
-- system call compatibility

Let me know.

--linas