List: axp-redhat
Subject: Alpha ELF---any news?
From: "David Mosberger-Tang" <davidm () AZStarNet ! com>
Date: 1996-03-06 11:47:25
Sorry to keep asking the same question again: has there been any
movement on the Alpha ELF front? It would be beneficial to GNU libc
as well.
--david
List: axp-redhat
Subject: Re: Alpha ELF---any news?
From: "Erik Troan" <ewt () redhat ! com>
Date: 1996-03-06 14:31:43
On Wed, 6 Mar 1996, David Mosberger-Tang wrote:
> Sorry to keep asking the same question again: has there been any
> movement on the Alpha ELF front? It would be beneficial to GNU libc
> as well.
If not, we should get Eric Youngdale to do something, and we'll move to
the official standard later. It will be painfull, but the lack of shared
libs is really crippling the Alpha/Linux platform.
Erik
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Always hoped that I'd be an apostle. Knew that I would make it if I tried.
Then when we retire we can write the gospels so they'll all talk about
us when we die. - "The Last Supper" from Jesus Christ Superstar
| Erik Troan = http://sunsite.unc.edu/ewt/ = ewt@sunsite.unc.edu |
List: axp-redhat
Subject: Re: Alpha ELF---any news?
From: "Jim_Nance () avanticorp ! com" <Jim_Nance () avanticorp ! com>
Date: 1996-03-06 16:10:32
> > Sorry to keep asking the same question again: has there been any
> > movement on the Alpha ELF front? It would be beneficial to GNU libc
> > as well.
>
> If not, we should get Eric Youngdale to do something, and we'll move to
> the official standard later. It will be painfull, but the lack of shared
> libs is really crippling the Alpha/Linux platform.
Perhaps we (actually, someone who knows how) could get draft documents
from the comittee defining the 64bit ELF standard, and that could be
implemented. This way there would be less to change, and we also might
expose some issues for the committee.
Jim
List: axp-redhat
Subject: Re: Alpha ELF---any news?
From: "David Mosberger-Tang" <davidm () AZStarNet ! com>
Date: 1996-03-06 16:37:45
>>>>> On Wed, 6 Mar 1996 16:47:42 -0600 (CST), richard@atheist.tamu.edu (Richard Henderson) said:
Richard> I'd been asking if draft copies of a standard were
Richard> available, so that any implementation that was begun
Richard> pre-standard would not differ so very much from the final.
Richard> Since then I've gotten hold of the OSF/1 calling convention
Richard> document and I'm even more convinced that this should have
Richard> been a perfectly straightforward extension to 32-bit ELF.
My understanding is that a straight-forward extension is possible but
undesirable since you'd end up with large object files. If you
compare the output of "ls -l" of any non-stripped ECOFF file with the
output of "size", I have no problem buying this argument. It looks
like ECOFF debugging and possibly relocation information takes up
quite some space. And don't say diskspace is free---something has to
produce, link, and write those object files and, for example, BFD does
everything incore, AFAIK.
Having ELF draft standard available would be a big plus. Almost
anything would be better than the current situation.
--david
List: axp-redhat
Subject: Re: Alpha ELF---any news?
From: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader" <hall () zk3 ! dec ! com>
Date: 1996-03-06 18:59:01
Not having worked with compilers and loaders for the past 15 years, I plead
ignorance to the details, but the people I talk to state that the ELF
object code standard has some hardware architectural dependencies that they
are trying to hammer out into a standard before any of the implementations
are done.
However, if the community feels that:
o it is better to get started now with a partial standard, and evolve
later
o Linux should be used as a "prototype" for the standard (a use for
Linux of which I heartily approve)
then I will ask the Digital Engineering group to help locate a copy of the
interim work and make it available to people (assuming that the people
who are working on it give us one)
After all, if Linux can handle both a.out and ELF, how hard can it be to handle
ELF 0.99 and ELF 1.0? (Don't bother answering that, I *know* that it is not
*I* that will have to do the magic).
md
--
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