Richard Earnshaw <rearnsha@arm.com> writes:
> Yeah, Yeah, all valid points, but my point is: is it really worth 
> expending a lot of effort unravelling the existing mess (especially if it 
> creates an incompatibility) if a few further hacks would keep the old 
> world running until a new one (elf based) can replace it in its entirity?

Dunno.  To me, it's worth for charles to do it if I decide to
recompile from source before ELF is implemented.  8-) More seriously,
people are fairly regularly screwed by the ld patches problem when
compiling -current.  The question is, for how much longer is that
tolerable?


Re: the incompatiblity, i figure there are a couple of ways people
upgrade from "what they're running" to "what they will be running" on
the ARM port:

	* install a new snapshot/release

	* recompile incrementally from sources.

My impression has been that, at least on the ARM port, the majority of
the users do the former rather than the latter, and are not unlikely
to rebuild a bunch of their local binaries when they do.  Therefore,
releasing a new snapshot will cause some pain, but not _too_ much if
there are also new binary packages built, etc.


There's also the issue of time frame.  Free software project,
volunteers, etc. -> no well-defined time frame to solve the problem.
Can often be better to spend a bit of time/pain doing some work
up-front to make the system more palatable in the mean time, just in
case the Right Solution takes longer to implement than expected.


> I'm not in a position to make the decision for anyone, just trying to 
> cover the options.

Same here.  I just like to bring up issues.  8-)



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