Re: Binutils 2.15

[Matt Thomas <matt at 3am-software dot com>]

At 06:44 PM 4/8/2004, Alan Modra wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 10:41:37AM -0700, Eric Christopher wrote:
> > On Thu, 2004-04-08 at 10:37, Thiemo Seufer wrote:
> > > According to the gas config, netbsd uses fmt=elf (and doesn't match for
> > > mips_el_, btw.). Is ECOFF used for some bootloader-only stuff?
> >
> > Yup.
>
> Seems to me that makes mips-ecoff a candidate for deprecation and
> removal in the next, ie. 2.16, release.  The same goes for all targets
> that aren't actively maintained.  People are better served using an
> older binutils release on such targets, because the older code is more
> likely to work.

No they aren't.  NetBSD/pmax uses ECOFF to generate loadable kernels.
However, those kernel are build using the ELF tools and then objcopy'ed
to ECOFF.  Using an old binutils doesn't help.  While we can replace
the bootblocks on disks to understand ELF (and we do), netboot'ed kernels
must be ECOFF since that's what the firmware understands.

NetBSD/shark has a similar issue with a.out.

--
Matt Thomas                     email: matt@3am-software.com
3am Software Foundry              www: http://3am-software.com/bio/matt/
Cupertino, CA              disclaimer: I avow all knowledge of this message.