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clean dos extender executable format (Developers)

posted by kerravon, Ligao, Free World North, 07.01.2023, 03:56

I have a question that isn't quite resolved.

One of the DOS extender executable formats, can't
remember the name, but it allowed a 32-bit INT 21H
to be called.

I was almost happy to support that format, but I
saw that they both expected segment registers to
be set to particular values on entry, and they
manipulated segment registers on certain 32-bit
INT 21H calls. exec() I think.

This format was both available commercially, and
someone had written a freeware version.

But they came pretty close to what I consider to
be clean.

I don't remember what the executable format was.
Presumably not a.out like I use for my 32-bit
executables. Although I guess I could use PE if
I wanted to (ie even if I only do INT 21H, rather
than calling DLLs).

I might be willing to have an MSDOS stub that
invokes a DOS extender, so long as I can ignore
that stub on an actual 32-bit system (ie PDOS/386).

And so long as the stub itself doesn't contain
any functionality other than invoking the external
loader.

And it would be good if the stub cleanly reported
an issue if it wasn't able to find the external
loader or some other issue. My a.out executables
don't do that. They get treated as .com files and
hang or whatever. So this would be a step up from
what I am currently doing.

I like a.out because of its simplicity. I only have
simple needs.

So my question is - is there some room for compromise
here? A clean 32-bit executable format.

Not one that messes around creating 16-bit calls either.
Any such thing must be external to the executable.

I don't care at all what happens outside of my
executable. I'm just looking for executables that are
technically clean and unkludged.

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