binfmt support in Cygwin?

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Nov 22 23:52, Cedric Blancher via Cygwin wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Sept 2023 at 07:15, Cedric Blancher
> <cedric.blancher@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Good morning!
> >
> > Does Cygwin support something like Linux binfmt, to register new binary types?
> >
> > Goal would be to recognise python compiled code, or
> > https://wiki.debian.org/QemuUserEmulation
> 
> ?

Cygwin doesn't implement its own binary executable loader like ld.so on
Linux.  Apart from allowing to start shell scripts per execve(2), we
depend on the Windows PE/COFF Loader.  Therefore, we can't support
non-PE/COFF binaries.

As a sidenote, way back when porting Cygwin to 64 bit, it has been
discussed to convert Cygwin binaries to ELF and use some kind of dynamic
loader executable like ld.so.  However, our budget was pretty low, and
the work involved in creating such a new loader on Windows was deemed
too expensive/complicated.  Having said that, anybody taking a stab at
something like that would have our keenest support.


Corinna