Re: Regarding the Future of ELKS

Alan Cox
2007-05-06T13:46:40Z

> ...incidentally, since then I have also been working on the Amsterdam Compiler
> Kit suite of compilers, and recently did a release; it the latest 6.0 now
> contains support for 8086, 80386 and 8080 code generators. It's also been
> hugely cleaned up --- I could add support for ELKS executables more or less
> trivially, if anyone wants it (and can point me at the spec); the only bit

Not sure there is a spec per se but the ELKS system originally used minix
format binaries (indeed I've used minix binaries on it). The later binary
format fixes the minix 8086 design flaw where it puts the stack above the
data. Instead ELKS puts the stack at the bottom of the data in a space
size set at compile time. This allows brk() to work properly and avoids
the chmem mess Minix has.

If nobody ever did that fix to Minix it might be more useful to teach
minix how to handle sane binary layouts and real memory allocation than
ELKS hacking 8)