From owner-freebsd-current Fri Dec 10 18:34:17 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from picnic.mat.net (picnic.mat.net [206.246.122.133]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8E27A14E26 for ; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 18:34:13 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from chuckr@picnic.mat.net) Received: from localhost (chuckr@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by picnic.mat.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA36883; Fri, 10 Dec 1999 21:32:56 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from chuckr@picnic.mat.net) Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 21:32:55 -0500 (EST) From: Chuck Robey To: "Daniel C. Sobral" Cc: Motoyuki Konno , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: why 'The legacy aout build' was removed from current ? In-Reply-To: <3850F88D.92172FB0@newsguy.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 10 Dec 1999, Daniel C. Sobral wrote: > What Motoyuki-san is complaining about is that applications that > depend on a.out libraries will suffer. Alas, I don't think that's > the case, since all these libraries are (or ought to be, anyway) in > compat. > > > Looking at copious examples from real life, forcing 3rd party developers > > to upgrade is a good way to lose 3rd party developers. It just *sounds* > > like a good way to go. As long as this is a change for building world, > > and not making changes to the kern/imgact things (so we keep on executing > > aout binaries) then this is probably the best way to go. > > OTOH, going the other way around is the reason why we (users) had to > deal with things like 1 Mb RAM and 64 Kb segments in the age of > 486s, one generation after the introduction of the 80386. As a free > operating system supported by volunteer effort, we are interested in > driving the hardware to it's limits instead of being limited by the > ways we once did things. Absolutely, but (here's the caveat) if it *doesn't* hold up any new development, and there's a significant base of users actually deriving benefit from it, then I wouldn't agree. I'm kinda binary about that test, because I fully agree that, if it holds up technology in a project like ours, it's out the door! Stopping the new aout world builds doesn't injure users of aout software, it only *really* strongly discourages new development in aout. I think it just needed to be emphasized that the aout imgact stuff isn't being tossed, so aout executables will still work (those that aren't otherwise incompatible). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chuck Robey | Interests include C programming, Electronics, 213 Lakeside Dr. Apt. T-1 | communications, and signal processing. Greenbelt, MD 20770 | I run picnic.mat.net: FreeBSD-current(i386) and (301) 220-2114 | jaunt.mat.net : FreeBSD-current(Alpha) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message