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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.rmit.EDU.AU!goanna.cs.rmit.EDU.AU!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.mathworks.com!uunet!in2.uu.net!news.bridge.net!news From: rba@bridge.net (Rey Bango) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Will FreeBSD ever support ELF? Date: 15 Oct 1995 00:33:57 GMT Organization: BridgeNet, LC - 100 S. Biscayne Blvd, Suite 1315, Miami FL. Lines: 70 Message-ID: <45pktl$7c9@news.bridge.net> References: <oenwlx9v8.fsf@vapor.Franz.COM> <45hbnd$9ln@uriah.heep.sax.de> <45lu9a$408@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-mia2-40.bridge.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=US-ASCII X-Newsreader: WinVN 0.99.6 Stefan, Could you point me to an FAQ that adequately explains what a.out & ELF are? I'm new to the UNIX game and I'm trying to understand the many concepts of this rich OS. I've also installed Slackware Linux and will be installing FreeBSD very soon, so that I can have the hands on experience. If they're aren't any FAQs, perhaps you could explain it to me. Thanks, Rey... In article <45lu9a$408@news.rrz.uni-koeln.de>, se@MI.Uni-Koeln.DE* says... > >In article <45hbnd$9ln@uriah.heep.sax.de>, j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) writes: >|> Kevin Layer <layer@Franz.COM> wrote: >|> >It seems that GCC is moving toward making ELF the object file format >|> >standard and making shared libraries possible. Given this and *if* >|> >there are no plans for FreeBSD to support ELF (I can't remember seeing >|> >a discussion about it), then won't this pose a problem for continued >|> >use of GCC on FreeBSD? >|> >|> Why should the ELF support of GNU cc/ld mean that a.out support will >|> be removed? >|> >|> Anyway, you're more than welcome to supply patches that make FreeBSD >|> run with ELF binaries. :-) > >Well, do we really want this ? > >Introducing a new binary and shared library format for >no good reason means, that we'll have to deal with both >formats for a long time to come. > >Linux had a reason to go to ELF, since their previous >shared library system offered very low execution time >overhead, but made building your own shared libraries >a pain. > >There is nothing magcial about ELF. It's just that the >Common Object File Format introduced in System V Unix >turned out to be not that common :) and that something >more flexible was needed for System V.4 ... > >So, there really ought to be GOOD reasons to introduce >ELF in FreeBSD, and I don't see any (except that the >Linux emulator should support ELF at some time, but >this is not much of a problem currently, since for a >long time to come just about every Linux binary will be >available in both a.out and ELF format ...) > >-- > Stefan Esser, Zentrum fuer Paralleles Rechnen Tel: +49 221 4706021 > Universitaet zu Koeln, Weyertal 80, 50931 Koeln FAX: +49 221 4705160 > ======================================================================== ====== > http://www.zpr.uni-koeln.de/staff/esser/esser.html <se@ZPR.Uni-Koeln.DE>