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On Thu, Mar 20, 2003 at 03:27:02PM +0000, Alaric B. Snell wrote:
> /me wails and hides from the hatred that can only exist between two rival=
 OS=20
> projects, or maybe editors.

As real as the political rift there is, there are some technical
differences of opinion (the pseudo-good reason for the break to
begin with). Witness, OpenBSD still using a.out. An OpenBSD advocate
would argue that it works just fine, why change it? (I happen to
diagree; that's not the point of the discussion, though.)

> Yep, in this case, but for other binary compatability situations?

Well, there are two problems. First, there's Making GHC, which
would be neat to have, work. The way to get there is from an ELF
platform. Second, there's using random OpenBSD binaries. Suggesting
"You shouldn't need to do that!" is a cop out in this case; it's not
really our business to tell people what they should and shouldn't at
that level. If someone runs an OpenBSD machine and a NetBSD machine
and some production-necessary, internally-built application
ordinarily runs on the OpenBSD machine, but that system chokes and
dies, their being able run it on the NetBSD machine (possibly after
slightly modifying the file to change the a.out OS revision) without
worries is huge, huge enough that if there's a simple fix, it's
worth it. Doing that probably wouldn't help the GHC case much, since
it's ultra-complex, but that's not really the point.

--=20
gabriel rosenkoetter
gr@eclipsed.net

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