[Coco] pacos9 ported to lwtools

[Bill Pierce]

Tormod, after checking all the OS9 "defs" files, I see what you're saying. I also found the edition is not an "official" part of the header. I even searched the os9 assembler manuals and found nothing about the "edition" byte.
BUT... Since it is used and displayed in several "standard" MW os9 utils such as "ident", I would think it was included by MW, maybe after all the manuals were written or maybe it was their "version control" and it just never got removed from the production editions. All I know is almost every assembler source I've ever looked at has this byte and there's provisions in the MW C compiler for including it as well. So I assume there was a reason even if just for developement, for the edition byte.
Doing a couple of quick disassembles, I found "ident" will use the next byte after the "name" fcs string as the "edition" byte no matter what that byte actually is.
I did find a few programs that did not have this byte, and even tried assembling a couple of my own sources without it (successfully). So as far as adding it to the lwtools assembler, I would think not. It would probably cause problems.
Ya gotta love the Coco, we learn new things every day... even after 30 years :-)


Bill Pierce
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-----Original Message-----
From: Tormod Volden <lists.tormod at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Sat, Feb 8, 2014 10:24 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] pacos9 ported to lwtools


On Sat, Feb 8, 2014 at 3:59 PM, Bill Pierce wrote:
> Tormod,
> The edition is not used by anything, though it is included in the initial 
parity check when a program is loaded. It's just there for ID puposes. In OS9 
(any vers/level & any executable program) run "ident" on a program module. You 
will see the "edition" number listed. You will also see the revision number 
displayed in combination with the attribute byte (usually "8x", x being the rev)
>
> This info has NOTHING to do with the actual program or it's running and as far 
as I know, OS9 does not use it. It's there as an internal "edition" and 
"revision" number to ID different versions from each other so you do not have to 
rename the different "editions" to reflect build changes.
>
> A sort of "version control" or "diff" if you will.
>
> It may have been originally used on the original assembler/compiler systems 
used by Microware to make the os9 system (for version control). I seem to 
remember a 3rd party OS9 assembler that used to advertise the ability to 
"update" the "edition/revision" automatically as you made changes in the source 
and run it through the assembler.
> I do know that it's a "required" part of a module header and will be "zeroed" 
if you omit it in the source. Otherwise the program will crash due to "incorrect 
header parity" (I think).

The "edition" is not part of the module header. Whatever it is, it is
in the module body, after the module name. So it is not part of the
header parity check. Just wondering if it was a standard (even if not
mentioned in the NitrOS-9 Technical reference) and if lwtools should
be extended to include it.

Tormod

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