XCOFF, BFD, ELF, brain mush

[Walt Pawley]

I've been asked if I couldn't create a "simple" program to translate a
restricted class of ELF files into XCOFF. Not being a C maven, or even a
long time bitslinger in PPC, I was skeptical in the first place. After
mucking about wondering why "binutils" wasn't up to this for quite some
time, installing a verson, messing with OS X and YDL at it, I'm only
slightly confused (and, if you believe that, I have this bridge in San
Francisco I'd like to talk to you about ...).

Theoretically, objcopy should be able to translate a file in one binary
format into another binary format ... IF they're both supported in BFD (an
acronym, I assume - it's been pretty slippery to nail down though that's
not been the primary focus of my activities - the TLA just shows up
EVERYWHERE). My problem is that nothing seems to support XCOFF in
particular - though I did find a supposed "back end" (which I don't know
what to do with anyway, sigh ...) for it.

Now I'm still mid-research and have every intention of beating this down to
my size at some point but I'm rather hoping there are some of you who've
tread this path and can club some sense into me before I get any dizzier. Is
this easier than I think? What am I missing?

-- 
Walter M. Pawley <walt@wump.org>
Wump Research & Company
676 River Bend Road, Roseburg, OR 97470
         541-672-8975