I have just made a change to the NetBSD ARM ELF compiler configuration
which corrects a bug in how NetBSD ARM ELF objects were marked.  Our
objects uses the "softvfp" floating point model by default, but were
not marked as such.

This is a flag-day, but a pretty easy one to bear; all existing programs
and shared libraries will continue to work properly.

Below is the entry I added to src/UPDATING.

20021121:
        A bug related to how ARM ELF objects were tagged has been
        corrected.  

        NetBSD ARM ELF uses the soft-VFP floating point model by
        default.  However, the assembler lacked support for marking
        objects as using the VFP floating point format, and the 
        compiler was no properly passing the flag indicating "soft-VFP"
        to the assembler. 

        Unfortunately, this means that the linker will now consider
        old (i.e. not marked "softvfp") NetBSD ARM ELF objects to be
        incompatible with new (properly marked) objects.  

        The problem will only manifest itself if you attempt to compile
        a new program using the fixed toolchain, and link that program
        against old libraries which do not have the proper "softvfp"
        markings.  ALL OF YOUR EXISTING BINARIES AND SHARED LIBRARIES
        WILL CONTINUE TO WORK PROPERLY.

        The only work-around for the problem is to recompile all of
        the libraries on the system.  The easiest way to do this for
        system libraries is to install a binary snapshot; there are 
        generally available on releng.netbsd.org.  Any packages you
        have installed which supply libraries will have to be recompiled
        if you wish to link new programs against those libraries.

        If you have questions about this matter, please contact 
        port-arm@netbsd.org.

-- 
        -- Jason R. Thorpe <thorpej@wasabisystems.com>