Subject: Re: ELF integration on a.out platforms
To: Christos Zoulas <christos@zoulas.com>
From: Jaromir Dolecek <dolecek@ics.muni.cz>
List: tech-toolchain
Date: 02/09/1999 22:19:24
Christos Zoulas wrote:
> 1. Static and _pic libraries.

Do you really care about it ? Old, a.out binaries have the code compiled in ..

> 2. Versioning problems with ld.so.cache for a.out

> 3. Confusion in a.out configuration programs.

ld.so.cahe or ldconfig is not used by ELF, AFAIK.

And if the a.out libraries are separated from ELF ones, it could be okay
and even easy to administer.  Of course, 3RD party libraries are problem
and /usr/libexec/ld.so would still be needed.

Anyway, I don't like bumping the major. It's too heavy-weight and
cumbersome and it would be needed only on few (one ?) archs. Will we
bump major next time when vax will go ELF ? I guess not :)
Major should change only with major API change, not when
only type of shared library changes.

I like 2) from original christos's proposal. Especially because
it clearly identifies a.out as dying and it's support optional.

What does "flag day" mean, anyway ? My english is not good enough to know :)
Seems like it  could be "problem of switch day".

Anyway, coding the emulation should be really straighforward, it only
needs to tweak read(2) and mmap(2) AFAICS.

-- 
Jaromir Dolecek <dolecek@ics.muni.cz>	http://www.ics.muni.cz/~dolecek/
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