[COFF] Building OS from source in the olden days

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

On Tuesday, 10 November 2020 at 17:12:27 -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> I don't know enough about MVS but it too is public domain until 3.8j or so,
> and I would expect that the way you serviced the system was about the same:
> patch the assembly code from PTFs (or whatever those are called in
> MVS-land),

Right!  There's a TLA that rings a bell.  "Permanent Temporary Fix"?
Or was that a reinterpretation?  But yes, it's clearly source-related.

> reassemble the modules, relink into a kernel/system image/whatever
> the os-appropriate nomenclature is.

Yup.  That reminds me of a poem published in Datamation decades ago:

  On either die the printer lie
  Fat stacks of paper six feet high
  That stun the mind abnd blur the eye,
  And lo!  Still more comes streaming by,
    A fresh SYSABEND dump.
  Ye printer clackth merrily
  "Compleccioun code is 043"
  Alack!  What can the matter be
    That made SYSABEND dump?
  My TCAM hath no MCP?
  My data cannot OPENed be?
  Consult my neighbourhood SE?
  The devil take thy dam and thee,
    Thou vile SYSABEND dump!
  Assemble modules on the fly
  And link for yet another try.
  With SUPERZAP a patch apply,
    This time THOU SHALT NOT DUMP!

  On either side the printer lie
  Fat stacks of paper twelve feet high
  That blow the mind and blast the eye.
  Gadzooks!  How shrill yon varlet's cry
  As sixteen megabytes go by
    In yet another dump.

Greg
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