From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Mar 17 20:40:52 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA01602 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 17 Mar 1997 20:40:52 -0800 (PST) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id UAA01588 for ; Mon, 17 Mar 1997 20:40:46 -0800 (PST) Received: (from msmith@localhost) by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.8.5/8.7.3) id PAA15114; Tue, 18 Mar 1997 15:08:28 +1030 (CST) From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199703180438.PAA15114@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: wd driver questions In-Reply-To: <199703180426.UAA13133@lestat.nas.nasa.gov> from Jason Thorpe at "Mar 17, 97 08:26:04 pm" To: thorpej@nas.nasa.gov Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 15:08:27 +1030 (CST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, bde@zeta.org.au, dgy@rtd.com, hackers@freebsd.org, helbig@mx.ba-stuttgart.de X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL28 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jason Thorpe stands accused of saying: > > ...So, for the record, NetBSD's libsa doesn't have a generic ELF loader > in it yet because not all architectures use ELF. Currently, the MIPS-based, > Alpha, and PowerPC ports do (although I haven't committed the PowerPC > stuff yet). Hmm, well saves me looking for it then 8) > The trick is backwards-compatibility, i.e. retaining the ability to load > both kinds of formats, and that means footprint. The NetBSD/alpha boot > blocks currently support loading ECOFF and ELF formats, for example, > because, until just recently, ECOFF was the standard format. Aha. One of the ideas I was toying with was having a 'standalone shell' which would then load the kernel linker, which then would load the kernel proper. Then as long as the standalone shell understood the objhect format the other standalone tools were built with, you could swap kernel linkers to suit the flavour of the day. I'm not entirely sure that the benefits that would accrue from this would necessarily be worthwhile though. > I think this will be changing soon, however. Now that the FSF has a sane > way of saying "This ELF binary is for this OS", I've put the following on > my NetBSD/hp300 TODO list: They do? Do you have a reference for this method? > - make ELF work on NetBSD m68k Hmm, I have one of these things (as I guess you've noticed 8), so naturally I'm interested in that too 8) > ...but it's not a priority right now... too many other things to do :-) Dang! > Jason R. Thorpe thorpej@nas.nasa.gov -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[