ORL is the Watcom Object Reader Library, which supports reading OMF objects, COFF (including PE) and ELF objects, executables, and libraries. ORL is open source under the Sybase license 1.0, with portions under a BSD-like license.
ORL was used in the Watcom linker and debugger. It's similar to libbfd in the GNU toolchain, but supports just a OMF, PE/COFF, and ELF.
This version of ORL has had the libwatcom dependencies removed, and several watcom libc components replaced with modified versions of similar functions from OpenBSD's libc. It compiles and functions using GCC, Clang, and Visual Studio in addition to Watcom. Some anachronisms have also been updated, and support for some features of COFF that MSVC lacks have been reenabled.
A number of shortcomings of the Watcom release have also been fixed, including the ability to load GCC-generated ELF files.
Support for OMF, COFF, and ELF can individually be toggled on and off. The API remains the same, but attempting to read or write such a file will now produce an error.