Subject: re: Removing compat/aout
To: Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>
From: matthew green <mrg@eterna.com.au>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/09/2002 11:41:24
: Surely, it's possible to do some thing with COMPAT_AOUT which can't
: be done with ld.so. However, one can be as well off with the ld.so
: solution, if one arranges things appropriately. Thus, I don't see
: a need for kernel solution, and would like to ditch it.
"Because it doesn't do anything useful for you" doesn't mean "throw it out"
-- some other people may find utility in it. I've needed COMPAT_AOUT a
total of 6 times already for migration purposes.
If this is your only argument for removing it, perhaps I should bring up the
migrate-UUCP-and-RCS-to-pkgsrc discussion again?
perhaps if uucp and rcs were broken and unmaintained this argument
would be valid. the fact is that COMPAT_AOUT f*cks you over and
it should be ejected with extreme prejudice. unless you're going
to volunterer to maintain it and fix all the PRs?
anyone running a system with a.out binaries that they *USE* really
doesn't want to have COMPAT_AOUT. why? say your shell is aout..
you type "cd /usr" in it. where do you end up? "/emul/aout/usr".
this is dangerous and confusing. it's certainly cost me a lot of
time, and even data (i didn't realise that the file i was editing
was in /emul/aout, as i didn't ask for it in there, and was very
unhappy about my changes not being there next time i looked.) i've
seen first hand reports of several other people that all say
basically the same thing.
.mrg.