> jon@gte.esi.us.es wrote:
> > It is only the kernel that is ELF only, you can still be 100% a.out in
> > userland if you like. Linus is changing how the kernel is loaded and this
> > is very much dependant on the binary format, trying to keep the old
> > a.out kernel is just asking for bugs to leak in.
>
> I disagree. It is my experience that making sure your code runs in
> slightly different environments is a way of eliminating bugs (that
> don't show up on one environment or the other). But I would agree
> that there is no future in a.out and it should be dropped for that
> reason.
In most cases you're right but not in this one. There is a lot a.out
specific code involved in the binutils which is less and less being
maintained because most of the world is switching to other binary formats.
As a result a.out tends to get buggier while ELF is getting better
supported and stable.
In fact I made the same decission as Linus independend of his decission
for Linux/MIPS. I still think I did the right thing.
Ralf