On 1/14/02 11:14 AM, "Chris Thomas" <cjack / cjack.com> wrote:

> To the best of my knowledge, OpenStep did not support multiple executable
> formats. PEF applications are supported on Mac OS X through a command-line
> tool called LaunchCFMApp that understands the PEF file format and sets up
> the vector libraries (every function called from a PEF app must transition
> through vector glue to translate it into a Mach-O call).
> 
> ELF applications could theoretically be supported the same way, but that
> would require someone to do the work of creating a LaunchELFApp tool and
> related stuff to translate ELF to Mach-O. PEF shared libraries are not
> directly accessible from Mach-O code, and neither would ELF libraries be.

Thanks for a very informative reply of which I'm only quoting a sample. I
hadn't realized that NeXTSTEP actually supported different machine
architectures with Mach-o and that this is the origin of the fat binary.
Apparently the only things that fat binaries are good for anymore is
x-platform Darwin and QuickTime Components.

I'm also starting to understand how it is *much* easier to go from a TOC
based executable format like PEF and presumably ELF to a bare pointer format
like Mach-O than to try to go the other way.
-- 
Some people say Windows users have an inferiority complex.
That's not true. It's not a complex.