Subject: Arm-linux

From: Charles Esson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 09:29:17 +1100

The reply from Mark

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hi,
  Hmmm I cannot comment on ARMLinux as I am not involved with it or use
it.
This seems just to be a question of whether NetBSD/arm32 has ELF support
or not.I know Linux in general has moved over to ELF and I assume that
ARMLinux will follow the same trend.
RiscBSD currently does not use ELF and currently there is no need for us
to implement ELF support other than to provide support for running Linux
binaries in Linux compatibility mode.
I don't know all the reasons that Linux switched to ELF but I understand
that shared libraries was one of the reasons. Currently we see no
problems with using a.out for shared libraries. (Note: We do not
implement
a.out shared libraries the way Linux did rather we use position
independant code.)
NetBSD does have ELF support for some platforms and when ELF is
available
for GCC/arm we will have support for it but at the moment it is not
something I am putting any time into to implement as it will not give us
anything we don't have with a.out.

If this does not answer all your questions please drop me a line.

Cheers,
                                Mark

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!       

I spent the weekend looking at binutils. Arm support seems to be
reasonable complete. You mentioned that it was buggy. Could you please
supply more details. I also spent time looking at gcc, I still don't
think it supports position independent code but Mark's reply would
suggest other wise I will ask ( If I am going to make a fool of myself I
may as well do a good job).
-- 
Charles Esson Colour Vision Systems
11 Park Street, Bacchus March,
Victoria, Australia 3340.
Phone: 61 53 673155, Fax: 61 53 674480

---

From: Ale Terlevich <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 11:05:26 +0000 (GMT)

> suggest other wise I will ask ( If I am going to make a fool of myself I

  I think you misunderstood.

  What he means is that when gcc supports pic for arm32, netbsd/arm32 will
get no advantage to going over to ELF from a.out.

  gcc 3.7.2.1 does NOT support pic. RiscBSD doesn't currently have shared 
libs for this reason. Last time Mark mentioned this on the RiscBSD 
mailing list he implied possible -fpic support by gcc 3.8.

  Hope this helps,

	Ale.

---

From: Philip Blundell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Jan 1997 12:33:01 +0000 (GMT)

> may as well do a good job).

Not off the top of my head.  I think most of the binutils bugs were quite
small -- things like the linker reporting unresolved symbols wrongly, and
I have a feeling there was a problem with the assembler screwing things up
occasionally (it dumped literals in the middle of the code). 

When I get time I'll have a proper look at the binutils and try to draw up
a wish list.  I think you're right about gcc not having support for PIC on
the ARM -- Mark was probably talking about NetBSD in general using PIC for
shared libraries, not specifically the ARM port. 

P.