Subject: Re: NetBSD mac68k ELF (was: Re: Kernel compile error)
To: Emile Schwarz <emile.schwarz@wanadoo.fr>
From: Allen Briggs <briggs@wasabisystems.com>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 03/22/2002 10:30:36
On Fri, Mar 22, 2002 at 10:53:38AM +0100, Emile Schwarz wrote:
> Is ELF “just a new way” to build NetBSD (and Unix/Linux stuff) ?

I don't know if this will help, but...

Computer programs are just binary data, at some level, but there are
different kinds of data: program code, data, debugging information, etc..
In order to make sense of the binary data, we have to arrange it somehow.
The traditional way to do this in BSD systems is in a format called
"a.out" -- it defines where the program code is, where the data is,
where the first instruction of the program code is, and so forth.
Another, more flexible and more widely used (now), format is ELF.

Really, it shouldn't matter to you at all, except that you are moving
from one format to another, and they're not quite compatible.

-allen

-- 
 Allen Briggs                     briggs@wasabisystems.com
 http://www.wasabisystems.com/    Quality NetBSD CDs, Sales, Support, Service
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