Re: Questions on EDASM reloc ($FE) files

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

David Wilson wrote:
> Oliver Schmidt wrote:
>
> > My
> > current thinking is that $FE is more of an intermediate file format
> > used solely by programmers using the EDASM toolkit - and thus they are
> > not existent on non-programmes machines.
>
>
> I have just had a quick read of Chapter 5 "The Relocating Loader" in
> the ProDOS Assembler Tools manual.
> Relocatable files are able to be run from BASIC programs using the
> RBOOT and RLOAD routines so are not an intermediate file and will be
> found on non-programmer's machines.

I seldom have any disagreement with David'd posts, but in this case
I don't think there is a strong enough argument not to re-purpose
the REL filetype under Contiki.

RBOOT and RLOAD are very seldom-used under DOS 3.3 and virtually
unused under ProDOS (along with EDASM).  Further, since ProDOS
supports a hierachical file system, and Contiki programs are very
likely to be concentrated in a directory apart from any EDASM REL
files, the potential for confusion is so small as to be negligible.

In any case, it would be prudent to include a validity check into
any routines accessing REL files, to provide some assurance that
they are what is expected prior to processing.  (I realize that this
is an unlikely addition for any EDASM REL file-processing programs,
but should be quite easy for Contiki-related programs.)

-michael

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