Re: BFD 2.16.1 "assertion failure" and "internal error"

[Nick Clifton]

Hi Dan,

> The standard ALPHA_MAGIC number is 0x183.
>
> However, the DEC C and C++ compilers can generate compressed binary 
> files, whose magic number will be 0x188.

Ah ha!

> An alternative would be to use the 'objZ -u' command to uncompress the 
> .o file.  Presumably, this could be done automatically from within the 
> BFD library.

Hmm - this might be tricky.  What if the objZ program is not available ? 
 What if I am running on a non-DEC ALPHA host and I want to examine/use 
object files created in this compressed format ?  Is the compression 
scheme used by DEC documented ?  Is there source code available for it ?

I think that the simplest change we could make would be to have BFD 
detect object files with a magic number of 0x188 and then have it issue 
an error message along the lines of "please decompress this file before 
passing it to BFD".  What do you think ?

Cheers
  Nick