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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!newshost.telstra.net!act.news.telstra.net!psgrain!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.MediaCity.com!usenet From: "H.J. Lu" <hjl@gnu.ai.mit.edu> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: FreeBSD vs Linux Date: Thu, 04 Apr 1996 11:18:48 -0800 Organization: Ooops Lines: 51 Message-ID: <31642098.75AB4317@gnu.ai.mit.edu> References: <4issad$h1o@nadine.teleport.com> <4jejjt$cdb@park.uvsc.edu> <315E0F1A.4E3FB53D@lucon.org> <Pine.LNX.3.91.960401105810.31921A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com> <4jso8v$n5i@dyson.iquest.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: jimi.innovix.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=gb2312 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; Linux 1.3.75 i586) CC: jdp@polstra.com John S. Dyson wrote: > > In article <Pine.LNX.3.91.960401105810.31921A-100000@gallup.cia-g.com>, > Stephen Fisher <lithium@cia-g.com> wrote: > >Why not sooner? If ELF was so great then FreeBSD would be switching > >_right now_. > > > It would be silly to switch to ELF right now. We are not going to for > at least six months (prob a year) -- even though a contributor already has > most of the support working. I am very very happy that our ELF capability is You should thank Linux for that. Ask John Polstra for yourself. FYI, my next binutils 2.6.0.12 will support FreeBSD/ELF. > being improved, and is working nicely on FreeBSD-current now. We will have the > support really really debugged instead of subjecting the user base to You sure can do that since most of ELF tools have been well debugged under Linux. > unnecessary trauma. Even if/when we go to full ELF, we will and must maintain > a.out support (and probably a.out code generation included) for years. > Linux can generate a.out binaries. We can even link the static a.out library to generate ELF binaries of ABI is the same. > There is little to be gained from moving to ELF *right now*, but I I thought that would create a better ELF for both Linux and FreeBSD. John found an ELF bug which was undetected under Linux. Ian fixed it and 2.6.0.11 was released for further testing. > recognize that it is a nicer binary format, and probably the direction > that FreeBSD is eventually going in. IMO, ELF is a really nice binary format -- > but a.out works great for us right now. But ELF works even greater :-(. BTW, there is an ELF bug. You should use gcc -shared to build an ELF shared library. ld -Bshareable won't work in all cases. > > Maybe in fewer words: why rush it and subject lots of users to unnecessary > problems? :-). The release based upon -current most likely will have full > ELF execution and development support. So if someone really wants ELF, they > will be able to use it. The system will continue to be a.out based for > the time being. That means some ELF bugs won't be found/fixed anytime soon. H.J.