> Wondering (1) if the existing boot loader is multiboot-compliant, and (2) if
> NetBSD plans to support ELF binaries.

1) I don't think so.

2) Maybe; but not in the near future.

> In parallel, I'm wondering if ELF binaries give any added functionality
> over existing NetBSD shared libs/a.out format.

The ELF object format has a few nice features, but even taken
collectively they aren't that convincing an argument to make the
switch.  Because our a.out based shared library scheme works so well,
there isn't much motivation for anyone to invest the time necessary to
switch to ELF.

One of the big problems with ELF is that the good folks at USL that
invented it made no provision for a "magic number" so that different
OS's could determine whether a given binary can be executed.  There
have been several proposals on how to remedy the problem, but as far
as I know they all have flaws of some sort or another.

	--jtc