From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Dec 29 4:54:34 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from post.mail.nl.demon.net (post-10.mail.nl.demon.net [194.159.73.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D357E37B41A for ; Sat, 29 Dec 2001 04:53:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from [212.238.194.207] (helo=tanya.raggedclown.net) by post.mail.nl.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 16KIzW-0000fM-00 for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sat, 29 Dec 2001 12:53:34 +0000 Received: by tanya.raggedclown.net (Postfix on SuSE Linux 7.3 (i386), from userid 500) id 2C9DB110D; Sat, 29 Dec 2001 13:02:24 +0100 (CET) Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 13:02:24 +0100 From: Cliff Sarginson To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: What exactly does the "ELF" tag mean? Message-ID: <20011229120224.GC3776@raggedclown.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.3.24i Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Sat, Dec 29, 2001 at 01:18:26AM +0000, S Roberts wrote: > Hello, > Simple question, I'm sure. > > What exactly is this "ELF" tag I keep coming across when reviewing software > (eg: MySQL 3.23.47 FreeBSD 4.4 ELF (Intel))designed to run on FreeBSD? > Not that simple a question :) Executable files conform to a certain structure, basically a definition of how they are laid out. ELF is the acronym for one such structure that is used by FreeBSD and some other systems. The original Unix structure was called "a.out" (which is still the default name for the output of the C compiler). For various reasons this was changed, although there are still a.out type binaries in the wild. There are many others. Binary compatibility is still a way off... This is quite a complex subject... Next question ? try asking what big-endian and little-endian mean .. lol. -- Regards Cliff To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message