On Tue, 27 Nov 2001, Frederick Bruckman wrote:

: > >I'm happy to say, I'm running ELF on my Q650.
: > >[...] work on the Booter, I was able to build and run an ELF system.
: > >The brave among you now have the chance to do it yourselves.
: >
: > That's great! Now, please forgive my sub-standard organic knowledge
: > storage device, but why is this a good thing? Is this A Good Thing?
:
: The most compelling reason to switch is that "gcc" for a.out is no
: longer supported.

Actually, it's at an even lower level than that:  The a.out format used by
NetBSD dates back to Unix Seventh Edition and earlier[!].  It's been
extended for multiple-platform IDs, shared objects, and so forth over time,
but it's still deficient in many ways from what modern compilers and
applications expect.

ELF is extensible, externally maintained, and even organized by a standards
body.  It's much easier (and externally maintained) to use ELF, so switching
is much less painful than doing all the work within NetBSD to keep the a.out
format and tools up to date with the rest of the world.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi & NetBSD:  Run with it.
-- CDs, Integration, Embedding, Support -- http://www.wasabisystems.com/