[1086] in SIPB_Linux_Development
Re: ELF migration
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jered J Floyd)
Fri Oct 6 13:34:38 1995
From: Jered J Floyd <jered@MIT.EDU>
To: Erik Nygren <nygren@MIT.EDU>
Cc: jered@MIT.EDU, linux-dev@MIT.EDU, linux-afs-bugs@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 06 Oct 1995 13:13:43 EDT."
<199510061713.NAA28231@foundation.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 06 Oct 1995 13:33:45 EDT
> First of all, i385_* would be a bad idea... :-)
Agreed.
> Seriously, I think it would be far too confusing to have this mix. As
> was pointed out earlier, Linux already has the longest @sys name of
> any platform so we should shorten it if anything.
Well 'i386_linuxelf1' was just a suggestion. 'i386_elf1'?
> I think the best solution is to just mix the binaries in the same
> bindir. If people want to run elf binaries then they just install the
> elf library upgrade package.
Yes, but this FORCES a.out users to install ELF support, which we really
shouldn't do.
> the elf libraries. If people have to start compiling every binary for
> elf and a.out or if we have to get locker maintainers to deal with
> this then we'll really lose and people will have a very good reason to
> switch over to NetBSD.
Well, my suggestion was that there would be no more _new_ a.out binaries,
but that we wouldn't get rid of existing a.out binaries for quite some time.
> I don't think it would be a good idea
> to change the @sys value for any reason unless it's ABSOLUTLEY
> necessary because of major, unavoidable binary incompatability. The
> primary reason in my mind is that we don't have control of many
> of the lockers that linux binaries are in...
Well, that's why I suggested what Sam said was possible...having AFS check
for i386_linuxelf1, and then i386_linux1. Having the new AFS systype with
an AFS that would try both @sys values would really solve all of the problems.
a.out users wouldn't be inconvienenced at all, and ELF users would have
access to both ELF and existing a.out binaries. Comments?
--Jered
