Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support

Jon Masters
2019-04-16T03:20:14Z

Hi Linus,

I'm Jon, and I just bought my first Alpha. What can I say, I was late to
the party, and I probably need to get out more. Actually, I wanted it
for its memory consistency model, or (some would say) lack thereof.

On 3/11/19 3:03 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 11:08 AM Måns Rullgård <mans@mansr.com> wrote:
>>
>> The latest version I have is 5.1, and that uses ECOFF.
>
> ECOFF _is_ a.out as far as Linux is concerned.
>
> So Linux basically treats ECOFF as "regular a.out with just some
> header extensions".
>
> We don't have any specific support for ECOFF.
>
> I _think_. Again, it's been years and years.

...so removing a.out would break various boot tooling as well. I'm still
working on getting my Miata up and running upstream kernels (should be
shortly) but I'm happy to help out testing any proposals.

Jon.