Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:36:15 -0700 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Jordan Hubbard <jkh@osd.bsdi.com> Cc: brooks@one-eyed-alien.net, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ELF, OS and ABI [was: Re: sysctl kern.fallback_elf_brand] Message-ID: <3A98A7DF.3E8FAA57@softweyr.com> References: <3A96F984.7233C733@cup.hp.com> <200102240016.RAA02409@usr05.primenet.com> <20010223162903.A7882@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <20010224125044P.jkh@osd.bsdi.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Jordan Hubbard wrote:
>
> I might also note that you don't need to play ELF games to get "fat
> binary support" in a package system, the idea of a permuted name space
> inside a package being something I've suggested several times in our
> PackageToolsNG discussions.
>
> Basically, the idea is that if you have a random-access package
> archive format (or even if you don't, it just being a little more
> painful then) then you can frob the package directory information in
> such a way that you encode names and property information into each
> physical directory entry, similar to the way C++ mangles type/function
> information into a global symbol space. That way a "fat package" for,
> say, GNU bash might have a directory which looks something like this:
>
> bin/bash@arch=i386
> bin/bash@arch=alpha
> man/man1/bash.1.gz@*
> info/bash.info@*
>
> Where, in this highly contrived example, we assume that everything
> following an un-escaped @ is the start of the property list
> information which has to be matched in order for that item to be
> extracted under its real name.
That was covered in the discussion on the OP mailing list. It's a workable
idea, but doesn't cover the situation of providing i.e. 4 or 5 different
architectures in a binary on an NFS server. In this case, you'd want the
package installer to rip out the ELF segments for architectures you're not
supporting, leaving all that you are.
It is interesting to contemplate whether or not you can fold together
data segments for any differing architectures.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3A98A7DF.3E8FAA57>