*BSD News Article 94608


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From: schweikh@rubin.noc.dfn.de (Jens Schweikhardt)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: ELF?
Date: 28 Apr 1997 14:00:39 GMT
Organization: Regional Network of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart, FRG
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Message-ID: <5k2ai7$efc$1@news.belwue.de>
References: <3363BCCC.3DF5@desy.de>> <87hggsm9d8.fsf@altair.franken.de> <y7z3esb5v7l.fsf@hzsbc259.nl.lucent.com>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39874


In article <y7z3esb5v7l.fsf@hzsbc259.nl.lucent.com> Peter Mutsaers <plm@lucent.com> writes:

[snip ELF on Linux and BSD]

# I was a Linux user at the time of the switch from a.out to ELF, and
# I've never understood the fuzz about it. The transition was smooth and
# easy, and I don't see the problem when BSD would switch.

I was a linux user at that time, too. The switch to ELF was *the*
reason to drop it and go FreeBSD. At that time I used to recompile
just everything on my linux box. There was some software that used
assembler magic which only worked for a.out and not for ELF (due to
the prepended underscores, IMSMC). It just wouldn't compile as an
ELF executable.

Switching a link format *is*not* a trivial task. I hope the FreeBSD
folks think long and hard about the cost/benefit ratio before going
for it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the ports broke (without
further frobnication).

Regards,

	Jens
--
Jens Schweikhardt  http://www.uni-stuttgart.de/People/schweikhardt/home.html
SIGSIG -- signature too long (core dumped)