Comment by cat_plus_plus

2 years ago

You can also install MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) and access a pretty decent command line environment via official Apple software.

MPW was actually one of the inspirations for MacRelix, in a backhanded sort of way:

https://www.metamage.com/text/relix/origins.html

I still use MPW's ToolServer for running the Metrowerks build tools, but sadly it's no longer available as an official download from Apple.

  • Question - looking at the code quickly, I see stuff about MWCC and Metrowerks object file format - is your tool chain in some way generating Metwowerks compatible object files? BeOS PowerPC uses the same compiler so you got me excited!

    • Yes and no. The MacRelix toolchain does, in a very trivial sense, generate Metrowerks-compatible object files, because mwcc is ultimately a wrapper around the Metrowerks-proprietary MWC68K and MWCPPC tools that run in MPW.

      I reverse-engineered enough of the .o header format so that MacRelix's ar and ld could retrieve architecture and runtime information from a static library instead of making the caller provide it via a switch.

      Separately, I've been writing post-linkers that patch or rewrite the Metrowerks-provided startup code in 68K code resources. The next step on this path might be writing my own compatible linker.

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