just to throw some of my observations about switching to ELF...


i've only done the NetBSD userland so far.. not packages and not X11.


there is a `compat_aout' kernel option that enables the normal binary
emulation `/emul/aout' directory to be created and populated with
a.out libraries, ld.so, etc.  this works quite well (though the
original compat_aout was a bit over agressive with translations) with
the caveat that now you will find /emul/aout/usr before /usr in any
a.out program.  eg, this means that shell filename completion on a
/usr/something will only work for pathnames existing in /emul/aout/usr
which i found REALLY annoying, _espcially_ as i was attempting to look
in both /usr/lib and /emul/aout/usr/lib ...

remember that /../ is the *real* root.. so /../usr/lib is the real
/usr/lib.  maybe i wouldn't have felt so lost if i had remembered that
at the time.


i haven't actually rebuild my shell (tcsh) with ELF yet to fix this
because i was waiting to upgrade all my SPARC's at the same time..
but since the initial setting up i haven't _really_ noticed the
problem above...  i have been using this system fairly heavily
lately for compiling 32 bit sparc64 kernels -- it is nice to have
a native compiler for development.  :-)



i'll be glad to see the compiler change go in -- maybe then i can
fix -Werror on the sparc64 kernel :-)