On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 2:34 PM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> wrote: > > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 8:47 PM Måns Rullgård <mans@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > > > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 11:08 AM Måns Rullgård <mans@xxxxxxxxx> 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. > > > > Right, which is why killing a.out entirely would have the unfortunate > > effect of also removing the OSF/1 compatibility on Alpha. > > > > If we are to support Alpha as an architecture at all, it makes sense to > > support the things people actually use it for. > > > > Now, personally I can live without it. I just don't like to see > > features removed without due consideration. > > The main historic use case I've heard of was running Netscape > Navigator on Alpha Linux, before there was an open source version. > Doing this today to connect to the open internet is probably > a bit pointless, but there may be other use cases. The best use case I know of is to run their C compiler. Måns sent patches in fact to make it work. There is a Linux version of the same compiler but I have a vague memory that it's broken in various ways that the Tru64 version is not.
