port-alpha/51926: The alpha EM_ALPHA and EM_ALPHA_EXP machine type handling seems out-of-date

[guillem%debian.org@localhost]

>Number:         51926
>Category:       port-alpha
>Synopsis:       The alpha EM_ALPHA and EM_ALPHA_EXP machine type handling seems out-of-date
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    port-alpha-maintainer
>State:          open
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Sun Jan 29 21:40:00 +0000 2017
>Originator:     Guillem Jover
>Release:        HEAD
>Organization:
Debian
>Environment:
>Description:
While going over various ELF implementations I noticed that NetBSD considers EM_ALPHA (41), and EM_ALPHA_EXP (0x9026) in reverse to what pretty much every other implementation thinks is the old and the current ID. Those would include at least Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, GNU binutils and LLVM.

The common usage indicates that 0x9026 is the current value for EM_ALPHA, and that 41 is considered the old one.

Even NetBSD considers it so in the code, but not in the macro names or the code comments.

Relevant are:

  <http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/sys/exec_elf.h?rev=1.156&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup>
  <http://cvsweb.netbsd.org/bsdweb.cgi/src/sys/arch/alpha/include/elf_machdep.h?rev=1.12&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup>

where the code comments and the macro names do not match current conventions.
>How-To-Repeat:

>Fix: