binutils and COFF format

[Alessandro Basili]

I found that gnu-binutils on my GNU/Linux system (FC11) do not support
COFF format while it was supported on some other unix-like OS (NetBSD).

Is there a way to get the binutils to support the COFF format? How?
Are there any other packages which would support COFF format? I am
particularly interested in the archiver, since ar doesn't seem to
understand COFF and my cross-linker fails to find the symbol table in
the library.

A little history for who is interested: I have been assigned a project
on an old dsp from Analog Device and I bumped in the g21k cross-compiler
which is based on gcc and was released under GPL.
After some work to make it compile under my system, I managed to have
almost everything I needed:

- compiler (g21k)
- assembler (asm21k)
- linker (ld21k)
- coffdump (cdump21k)

I also managed to compile the whole C-runtime library that Analog
Devices provides in source code within the VisualDSP software (a
software development environment).

Unfortunately if I use /ar/ apparently the symbols directory is not
created and the linker is not able to access objects in the library.
I have been informed that gnu-binutils on NetBSD supports COFF, but I
haven't managed to install it on my system.
The archiver is the only missing piece to the whole list of tools I need
to develop software for this architecture, that's why it is a little
frustrating to give it up after all the work done so far.

Any ideas or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

--
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?