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Date: Fri, 9 Aug 1996 12:05:39 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee>
To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
cc: "Hr.Ladavac" <lada@ws2301.gud.siemens.co.at>,
        Mark Diekhans <markd@Grizzly.COM>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: What are the plans for ELF support? 
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On Fri, 9 Aug 1996, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:

> > What for?  Is there something that the half-assed[1] GNU ELF support gains
> > you that the a.out libraries don't have (remember: we're not Linux, a.out
> > libs are really dynamically--read PIC--linked)?
> 
> I wouldn't have phrased it quite that way.
> 
> There's been experimental work underway for months to make FreeBSD
> generate native ELF binaries, and you can even get a pre-release kit
> for it all from John Polstra, there's just no rush to *replace* any of
> our a.out based stuff with ELF.  As has already been said in this list
> many, many times before (and Mark should learn to use the mail archive
> search feature at http://www.freebsd.org, using "ELF" as a keyword
> ;-), we'll only switch to ELF if and when it demonstrates a set of
> advantages which outweigh the disadvantages of changing.
> 

I hope there will remain the compat kit for those who might want to use 
old programs. Or will FreeBSD be able to "on the fly" mix and match ELF 
and a.out libs and binaries?

	Sander

> 					Jordan
>