[COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 18:45:15 -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 10, 2020 at 6:11 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog at lemis.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm currently reviewing a paper about Unix and Linux, and I made the
>> comment that in the olden days the normal way to build an OS image for
>> a big computer was from source.  Now I've been asked for a reference,
>> and I can't find one!  Can anybody help?
>
> Mumble -- For IBM and DEC in the 60s and early 70s, the manufactures
> distributed the (assembler) sources to the OS and we could (and did)
> build from source but usually just built parts.

Right, this is my recollection.

> Remember, the target was the manufacturers HW so they were not
> giving away much.

Again, my assessment.

The real issue is: where can I find a reference?  Google brings up so
many false positives that it's not worth the trouble, and Wikipedia's
pages on "System generation" are too vague.

Greg
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