On March 27, 2004 12:20 pm, matthew green wrote:
>    [Note - Cc changed to tech-pkg instead of source-changes]

I have packages on the brain these days.  I meant tech-kern of course.

>    On March 27, 2004 10:07 am, matthew green wrote:
>    >    Log Message:
>    >    Document COMPAT_AOUT option.
>    >    This closes PR misc/13819
>    > could this be fleshed out to include that COMPAT_AOUT is _NOT_
>    > required to run a.out binaries and that doing so may have extremely
>    > undesirable effects.  it is a deprecated interface that actually is
>    > harmful to system binaries.  ie, "cd /usr" in an a.out shell ends up
>    > in "/emul/aout/usr". prior netbsd a.out platforms have better methods
>    > of acheiving this... COMPAT_AOUT would have been removed except for a
>    > couple of vocal objections...  it may even be those objections are no
>    > longer strenuous enough infact :-)
>
>    No argument here.  I was simply trying to close an ancient PR that no
> one seemed to care about.  I did sneak in the bit about it being ancient. 
> If you think that it should be fleshed out further why not just go ahead?
>
>
> i'm busy enough trying to get my own 2.0 list done to fix new
> documentation.  i didn't make the change and the current wording
> is misleading.  i did give you enough info to fix it up tho...
> right now, it reads as if COMPAT_AOUT is required for using
> a.out, when infact for nearly every user, it's really just
> confusing and potentially harmful.

Sorry, didn't mean to sound argumentative there.  Of course I will clean this 
up.  I just wasn't sure exactly what to say.  Everyone is telling me what 
COMPAT_AOUT doesn't do but what does it do?  I'm thinking that what we really 
need is something like this:

"This option is deprecated.  If you think that you need this then you should 
know what you are doing.  Note that COMPAT_AOUT is not required to run a.out 
binaries."

OK, maybe not.  :-)  But if someone can tell me in fewer than a dozen words 
what this option is supposed to achieve I will rework the verbiage.  I will 
present it here first before changing the file again.

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy@netbsd.org>
http://www.NetBSD.org/