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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!usenet.eel.ufl.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!EU.net!Germany.EU.net!zib-berlin.de!unlisys!bb-data.de!news From: mib@bb-data.de (Martin Ibert) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD ELF support Date: 18 Mar 1996 13:39:22 +0100 Organization: BB-DATA GmbH, Berlin, Germany Lines: 41 Sender: mib@laforge.ppe.bb-data.de Message-ID: <kiaka0i379h.fsf@laforge.ppe.bb-data.de> References: <4i9gov$42s@usenet.rpi.edu> <4icsqp$2fu@austin.polstra.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: laforge.ppe.bb-data.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit In-reply-to: jdp@polstra.com's message of 15 Mar 1996 15:00:41 -0800 X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.1 In article <4icsqp$2fu@austin.polstra.com> jdp@polstra.com (John Polstra) writes: : OK, first, calm down, have a seat, take a deep breath, and another. : Drink this. Better now? Good. I liked that one :-) BTW, what is it that you give ELF haters to drink? :-) : _If_ FreeBSD ever switches to ELF, I would like to think that we'd come : up with a less disruptive way to go about it than what the Linux people : managed. I don't think it was so disruptive. I waited until two or three weeks ago before ELFing my Linux system at work, and I must say that it was almost painless. It's like with everything in the Linux world: Do it first, and you'll get hurt. Do it later, and it will go smoothly. I have investigated ELF support in Linux and some proprietary commercial PC UNIXoids somewhat, and I wasn't so impressed in the end. The ability to run ELF binaries from forein OS's is flaky at best. It doesn't even work reliably between SVR4-derived OS's. Linux managed to run one or two "foreign" binaries, but Linux binaries are obviously compatible only with Linux, even when linked statically. But I do like ELF a lot, and would like to see FreeBSD ELFed sooner or later. The three-pronged approach (current, stable, release) should take a lot of the pain out of the transition for those of us that prefer their OS to come from a CD-ROM. And if you are on current, you don't deserve a painless transition, do you? :-/ But doing it right (in my view) will require a lot of synchronisation with the Linux crowd (the world doesn't need another incompatible ELF variant), possibly up to and including synchronising library version numbers and symbol tables (so that you don't have to keep two sets of ELF libraries) so that Linux and FreeBSD ELF binaries are really one and the same. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl.-Inform. Martin Ibert, BB-DATA GmbH, Brunnenstraße 111, D-13355 Berlin >> e-mail <mib@bb-data.de>, phone +49-30-245-56582, fax +49-30-245-56577 << --------------------------------------------------------------------------- >> Disclaimer: My views do not necessarily reflect those of my employer. <<