From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 3 10:41:19 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id KAA29603 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 10:41:19 -0800 (PST) Received: from rocky.sri.MT.net (rocky.sri.MT.net [204.182.243.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id KAA29597 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 10:41:16 -0800 (PST) Received: (from nate@localhost) by rocky.sri.MT.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) id LAA28333; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 11:42:12 -0700 Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 11:42:12 -0700 From: Nate Williams Message-Id: <199601031842.LAA28333@rocky.sri.MT.net> To: J Wunsch Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.org (FreeBSD hackers) Subject: Re: Demand loading (Re: FreeBSD, Zappa & PCI) In-Reply-To: <199601031644.RAA20642@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <7741.820667981@time.cdrom.com> <199601031644.RAA20642@uriah.heep.sax.de> Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk J. Wunsch writes: > As Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > > > Can someone explain why we need ELF or its equivalent for this > > > to be feasible? > > It supports any number of file sections. Stock a.out supports only > text, data, bss (and symbols). > > > I don't think we do at all. > > I don't understand your antipathy against ELF. Why still fiddling > with an ancient crock (a.out) when a more modern definition is already > there? I think that part of my reason for avoiding ELF is becuase we don't need to move to yet another file format just as we are starting to support legacy applications and such. However, I don't think it would be bad if we actually had support for running ELF binaries as part of the system. It's just not something I'd like to see become the standard binary format. Nate