*BSD News Article 38105


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From: nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu (Nate Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: ELF and dynamic loading (Re: 386BSD vs Linux)
Date: 19 Nov 1994 20:37:38 GMT
Organization: Montana State University, Bozeman  Montana
Lines: 50
Message-ID: <3alnmi$57g@pdq.coe.montana.edu>
References: <3ag7cn$lba@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <3ai3oc$ffm@news.nynexst.com> <3albdp$rcf@pdq.coe.montana.edu> <CzJ6p3.7Gv@kithrup.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: bsd.coe.montana.edu

[ BTW - Thanks for indulging me on the details of ELF ]

In article <CzJ6p3.7Gv@kithrup.com>, Sean Eric Fagan <sef@kithrup.com> wrote:
>In article <3albdp$rcf@pdq.coe.montana.edu>,
>Nate Williams <nate@bsd.coe.montana.edu> wrote:
>>What does ELF buy me (generic non-shlib
>>implementor) that the current implementation in FreeBSD doesn't have?
>
>Not a whole lot, really.  Except that it is, in lots of ways, "better" for
>the developers, which means the compiler, linker, and OS writers, which
>generally means that the end-user and third-party developers reap quite a
>lot of benefits.

Such as?  Assuming we are all running one operating system (yes, not a
completely valid assumption later, but for now).  Are there any features
that a person who is running one operating system will gain by using
ELF shlibs?


>The current *bsd shared libraries are not so easy-to-use.
>
>Try running a NetBSD shared binary on a FreeBSD system, or vice versa.  It
>can easily not work, because of differences in the shared libraries, and the
>fact that both are descended from the same version, so they're too similar.

Okay.  I agree that if you are trying to run binaries from many
operating systems,  AND you can differentiate between those binaries,
ELF would be a big win.

However, since everyone should be running FreeBSD it won't be an issue
as soon as we take over the world. :-)  (Really, that's a BIG smiley)

>It could, for
>example, load in /usr/libexec/netbsd-ld.so, which would know to look in
>/usr/lib/netbsd for all of the shared libraries it wants, instead of
>/usr/lib.

Which would require having a complete set of NetBSD shared libraries,
and SCO shared libraries, and Linux shared libraries, etc...

Thanks for going into technical detail on this, it helped me understand
the issues much better.


Nate
-- 
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