From owner-freebsd-current Tue Jul 29 21:30:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA06826 for current-outgoing; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:30:52 -0700 (PDT) Received: from austin.polstra.com (austin.polstra.com [206.213.73.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA06818 for ; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:30:49 -0700 (PDT) Received: from austin.polstra.com (jdp@localhost) by austin.polstra.com (8.8.6/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA07677; Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:29:49 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199707300429.VAA07677@austin.polstra.com> To: TLiddelow@cybec.com.au (Tim Liddelow) cc: msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: pccard and -current; a long way to go. :-( In-reply-to: Your message of "Wed, 30 Jul 1997 11:06:36 +1000." <33DE939C.E3907FDE@cybec.com.au> Date: Tue, 29 Jul 1997 21:29:49 -0700 From: John Polstra Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > I'm not complaining, > > but I'm also not feeling encouraged to expend any more effort on > > it. > > Well that's a shame John; you may remember my enthusiasm a few years > back regarding your efforts and I still feel that way. I just think > that perhaps a little bit of PR is in order - why is ELF a good thing? > (I know, but perhaps other people don't). What would be the benefits > of moving to ELF ? Perhaps you've already done this ... I don't > know. The people who recognize the benefits of moving to ELF are the ones who need to do the PR. The question is not "would ELF be better?" but rather "would ELF be _enough_ better to make it worth the pain of the transition?" Focusing on the language tools as I have, I see certain benefits: * Our linker has major design faults in its handling of shared libraries. They're probably never going to be fixed without a rewrite of the whole thing or at least the shared library code. The ELF linker doesn't have these faults. * The ELF tools are maintained by people besides us. * There are many bugs in g++ which cause the dreaded "relocation burbs" for a.out. These bugs happen to make no difference for ELF. They are in areas of the compiler that are a total mess and that are extremely complicated. I have already fixed the ones that are "easy enough" to fix. Because they affect only us, the remaining bugs are never going to be fixed, in my opinion. These benefits are real, but I'm not sure they're enough. (If you are looking for a facts-be-damned advocate of FreeBSD-ELF, I'm not your guy.) There is plenty of room for intelligent disagreement about it. I myself have about three opinions on the subject, all in conflict with one another. :-) I am sure there would be other benefits, but I don't know enough about them to lobby on their behalf. The people who do are the ones who need to do the PR. Explain why FreeBSD would be a better place if it used ELF. So far nobody's done a very good job of that. "Pageable kernel data areas?" Yawn. What does it mean to me as a user or as a developer? Would the system run faster? Use less memory? How much faster? How much less? Who's going to implement it if we switch to ELF? Enquiring minds want to know. John -- John Polstra jdp@polstra.com John D. Polstra & Co., Inc. Seattle, Washington USA "Self-knowledge is always bad news." -- John Barth