On Wed, 28 Feb 2001, John Refling wrote:
> I have software which I'm packaging which wants to read its own symbol
> tables and stuff, so there is a.out code and elf code to do this.  Is
> there a pkg variable which I can test to determine this?

no, but you can test output of "make show-shlib-type". See bsd.pkg.mk for
some examples. 


> Also, where can I find out which ports and which versions thereof use
> elf or a.out format?

I don't think there's a table somewhere. 

Some (alpha, ... ?) have always been ELF, some others have always been (so
far :) a.out. from 1.4.3->1.5, i386 and sparc switched from a.out to ELF. 
from 1.5.x to 1.6, some m68k ports (sun3, dunno what else) will switch
a.out->ELF. 

Actually, the "ELF" column of http://www.netbsd.org/developers/features/
will tell you what -current is about. 


> Finally, how would we distribute binaries for such a beast?  An a.out
> version and elf version for each architecture that ever had an a.out
> or elf format?  Sounds problematic.

Just as we do now for binary pkgs. Seperated in dirs for OS release and
system arch. What else!? X-)


> Is sparc 1.4.3 a.out and 1.5 elf?

yes.


 - Hubert

-- 
Hubert Feyrer <hubert.feyrer@informatik.fh-regensburg.de>