Subject: Re: binary compatibility (Was: emacs, perl and display)
To: Patrick Welche <prlw1@cam.ac.uk>
From: David Brownlee <abs@anim.dreamworks.com>
List: port-arm32
Date: 05/06/1997 13:53:51
On Tue, 6 May 1997, Patrick Welche wrote:

> Rob Black wrote:
> > Well, in theory we could emulate Solaris if Sun were ever to release Solaris
> > for an ARM platform. Emulating a Sparc processor as well is rather more of a
> > tall order.
> 
> Sparc on a daughter board? No - what I meant was, can't you build a
> kernel with some of these uncommented
> 
> #options        COMPAT_SVR4     # binary compatibility with SVR4
> #options        COMPAT_IBCS2    # binary compatibility with SCO and ISC
> #options        COMPAT_LINUX    # binary compatibility with Linux
> #options        COMPAT_FREEBSD  # binary compatibility with FreeBSD
> 
> #options        EXEC_ELF32      # 32-bit ELF executables (SVR4, Linux)
> 
> and then run the Netscape binary for the whichever one was uncommented?

	Only if you are running NetBSD on the appropriate CPU - currently
	'binary compatibility' under NetBSD is restricted to operating
	systems that run on the current machine architecture. (This means
	you can run SunOS/sun3 binaries on a macII, even though you cannot
	run SunOS/sun direct on a macII, (both use m68k CPUs)).

	The best option for NetBSD/arm32 would probably be for someone to
	write code to use an ix86 CPU board with NetBSD/arm32, either
	running	NetBSD/i386 directly (thus enabling BSDI, SCO, FreeBSD,
	linux, etc compatibility), or providing a similar set of
	callbacks(?) to the Aleph1 software, allowing use of Windows etc.

	I have a 486 board available free to anyone interested in trying
	:)
                David/abs               abs@anim.dreamworks.com

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