Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com> writes:
> Erm, radical suggestion time.  Rather than trying to fix up what is 
> increasingly apparent as a "botch" job, why don't we migrate the ARM port 
> to using ELF.  I'm now in a position where I can make details of the ARM 
> ELF format available and we can do the job properly and (maybe) become 
> more compatible with the rest of the arm world at the same time.
> 
> Comments?

"And that would be done when?!"  (Yes, that's just rehetorical.)

That's well and good 6 weeks, or 2 or 3 months from now when it's
actually done.  I can imagine that it could be done sooner, but i
think a quality job, to make sure it's all tested, etc., would
probably take at least that long.  And if you're really going to try
to become compatible -- not just slightly more compatible -- with the
rest of the ARM world (structure alignment is what i'm thinking of),
then it'll probably take longer than that.

In the mean time, everybody who builds -current from fresh
NetBSD-current sources loses.  Sure, they've been losing for a long
time, but it's _really_ silly for them to be told "lose a while
longer, we have a good fix in hand but don't want to use it."


I would bet that there's no real need for people to even install from
binary snapshots, if they're willing to build two iterations of the
world (one all static, then one with all the new tools)...



cgd
-- 
Chris Demetriou - cgd@netbsd.org - http://www.netbsd.org/People/Pages/cgd.html
Disclaimer: Not speaking for NetBSD, just expressing my own opinion.