For anyone missing COM files, it's not very difficult to slap a (nearly) constant ELF header on what is basically a glorified COM file to generate a valid executable.
(hmm... I haven't done this since widespread W^X; it might be a little more difficult these days but if so anyone who's had to write ROMable code will know the usual workarounds)
That's what I had been doing, but I had been guessing that "mandatory W^X" meant a loader should ignore it even if requested?
(for the historians, we're basically discussing the difference between OMAGIC [0407] and NMAGIC [0410] a.out formats, both of which are much simpler than ELF)
(hmm... I haven't done this since widespread W^X; it might be a little more difficult these days but if so anyone who's had to write ROMable code will know the usual workarounds)