Notices by Vertigo (vertigo@mastodon.social), page 18

I am half-way tempted to say screw it all, and just write my own Modula-2 compiler, rewrite my assembler to emit Hunk-format object files, and create a linker that will create Hunk-format executables and libraries.

ELF, like systemd that came long after it, is perhaps one of the most egregious violations of the Unix philosophy that I've ever seen. A horrible, horrible file format.

Now, wouldn't it be funny if I ended up not using ELF for the Kestrel-3, but System/360 OBJ or GOFF format files instead?

Man, these two seem *so* much simpler...

@Azure Yeah, that's what I've heard from others too.

@Azure I made a conscious decision to not watch this series. I could tell from its production values that it wasn't true Star Trek: lens flares, dark scenes everywhere, lots of flashy explosions and special effects ...

Seeing your commentary vindicates my initial impressions. While it might be a fun watch, to be sure, it's not Star Trek. Not really.

Compared to the drop-dead simple approach taken by Tripos (and, ergo, AmigaDOS), this is just straight-up nuts. Who thought this was a great idea?

The more I work with ELF, the more I am starting to detest it. It's way *too* simple in some respects, for which it compensates by being in-FUCKING-SANELY complicated in other respects. >:/

I really need to find more fan video productions to be part of. I miss gripping. :(

HUH.... I'm listed as an actor now. When did THAT happen?

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3530841/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Alas, my contributions to other episodes since these still aren't up though. Not complaining though; not everyone even gets an imdb page.

@crc @mpts Is that the correct link to the issue? As linked, I see a bug concerning /dev/dsp not being able to be re-opened for reading.

So, today, I think I'm going to put hacking on DX-Forth on hold for awhile, and try to play with loading and executing dynamically-linked ELF files.

Without using mmap().

The goal of this research is to come up with an ELF loader that I can eventually port to a first-generation Kestrel-3.

An unexpanded Kestrel-2DX doesn't have the memory to deal with dynamic ELFs; a statically linked ELF that, in its entirety, is less than 32KB is doable, but that's it; also, statically linked ELFs are easy.

@djsundog @seanl Just wait until you encounter ColorForth.

ColorForth took a similar approach, where tapping the spacebar invoked the previously entered word, which then cleared out the input buffer. Misspelled words took no action; backspace just emptied the input buffer as well.

@seanl @djsundog You aren't likely able to run immediate words from the interactive prompt. I believe @djsundog is referring to the Forth's outer interpreter, not the inner interpreter or what happens when you INCLUDE/LOAD a file/block.

Just got LOAD working! Woohoo!

The only problem is, I now need to relocate the interpreter's return stack. Invoking LOAD puts so much pressure on the return stack that it overflows into the video display framebuffer. Yuck.