CompuServe Messages

Dave, I've heard this comment before, that you can't do absolute code on the Amiga. I don't claim to be an expert on the AMiga … I didn't get a developer's kit, so don't have all the facts, but I simply can't believe it's true. I realize that the Amiga uses "scatter-loading", so that a program ends up spread out all over memory, but my understanding is that that's taken care of by the loader. The linker doesn't generate a true absolute file .. just one that has had all external references resolved. The relocation info is still intact, so when the loader breaks the program up into hunks for loading, it can relocate each hunk differently, and chain them together. Isn't that the same way it's done on the Big Blue PC? Anyhow, I get the idea that some folks have read all this and concluded that you must write all your code for the Amiga using only PC-relative addressing. I don't see any restriction like that in the documentation, and I think that's a concept that needs to be put to rest. I don't think that's really what you meant by your comment, but I just wanted to clear the air. Getting back to Small C, your point's well taken. Although in reality the code doesn't have to be compatible with the linker, just the loader, in practical terms it's the same thing, since the formats are the same. It would take major surgery to a compiler to get it to produce a relocatable output when it wants to generate absolute. So as you said, the only practical thing to do is to have it produce assembler language source. But then, if you have to have separate phases for compile, assemble, and link, we're back to slow performance. Sigh. Jack