Other *NIX apps

[David Long]

Digital/Compaq has/had a very detailed  "Alpha Calling Standard" which
(amongst other things) defines the register usage for function calls. 
This information, and the Digital Unix (aka DEC OSF/1, aka Tru64 Unix)
syscall number assignments were used by the GNU C compiler and Linux for
the Alpha port.  Maddog probably knows more about this since I think he
got Linus the Alpha box.  Since the executable file format was also
compatible between Linux and the Digital OS, it actually was possible to
run an executable built for one, on the other (not positive it worked
both ways).  Shared libraries were one of the gotchas though.  There
were potential licensing issues when certain libraries were statically
linked into the executable, but I think Compaq took steps to reduce
those issues.  Don't know if any of this still holds true today,
especially now that Compaq as such is no more.

-dl
-- 
David A. Long
JumpShift, LLC

dave at jumpshift.com