On Mon, 23 Oct 1995 03:07:09 GMT 
 christos@deshaw.com (Christos Zoulas) wrote:

 > I think there are two things that we will gain.
 > 
 > 1. uniformity of executable format across platforms.

I don't see this out-weighing the benefit of sticking with something that 
works perfectly fine.

 > 2. ability to use the latest and greatest of the gnu tools without extensive
 >    modifications.

Ah, but if the changes for NetBSD get merged into the GNU tools, it 
doesn't matter.

 > and of course all the advantages Elf has over a.out.

It just seems to me that for all ports but the Alpha and Mips, moving to 
ELF is change for change's sake.  Now, new ports (as in new CPUs, not a 
new 68k platform, for example) should definitely use an exec format best 
suited for it.  That might be ELF.  It might be something else (don't ask 
me what...) ... and our toolchain should be made aware of them, and 
libkvm, nlist, etc.  For those ports.  But forcing the i386, m68k, and 
sparc to move to ELF when a.out works perfectly fine seems Just Wrong.

 > I've been trying to lobby the use of the note field, but noone seems to
 > care or listen.

That somehow doesn't surprise me :-)

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