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Interesting work on Universal Executables (Cosmopolitan)
Blackorzar:
I like the concept that Cosmo brings to executable file formats.
It is basically ELF (Linux executable) with a wrapper that allows other OS to execute it.
They also have some powerful features that could be interesting:
1. Their executable is a self-executable zip file. So, files can be added to the zip portion of the file using regular zip tools (taking advantage on zip files having their metadata at the end of the file).
2. The ZIP section of the executable allows them to have a readonly filesystem embedded in the exe itself. They have a library to access the zip section.
3. The Executable files are also bootable in bare metal. This is currently very limited. But allows them the possibility on the future to make Cosmo applications to be Cloud/VM friendly.
4. They have been able to have big executables (up to 4GB) that are used in an AI (LLM) app.
I wonder if Lazarus could take advantage of a medium like this to make portable GUI apps. The zip section could allow to include a portable XWin and GTK along to platform specific versions of a graphics library (they have been able to compile SDL in Cosmo already).
MarkMLl:
However we do have to remember that no matter how good an idea is, if the Linux core developers don't like it it's dead in the water.
Just look at what happened to https://icculus.org/fatelf/ as an example.
And I'd particularly say that POSIX is irrelevant with people like Lennart Poettering actively advocating against strict compliance.
I'm not saying that I'm happy with any of the above, but they're the brutal realities.
MarkMLl
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