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

From: "Måns Rullgård" <mans@mansr.com>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
	Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>, Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org>,
	"the arch\/x86 maintainers" <x86@kernel.org>,
	Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Richard Weinberger <richard@nod.at>,
	Anton Ivanov <anton.ivanov@cambridgegreys.com>,
	linux-alpha <linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-m68k@lists.linux-m68k.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:08:25 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <yw1x5zsp473a.fsf@mansr.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAHk-=whD1SumZUBQeuMT-GcciwPxg_jW_TsPAmokYp3sGGCGhA@mail.gmail.com> (Linus Torvalds's message of "Mon, 11 Mar 2019 09:45:32 -0700")

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 9:26 AM Måns Rullgård <mans@mansr.com> wrote:
>>
>> Anyone running an Alpha machine likely also has some old OSF/1 binaries
>> they may wish to use.  It would be a shame to remove this feature, IMO.
>
> If that's the case then we'd have to keep a.out alive for alpha, since
> that's the OSF/1 binary format (at least the only one we support - I'm
> not sure if later versions of OSF/1 ended up getting ELF).

The latest version I have is 5.1, and that uses ECOFF.

> Which I guess we could do, but the question is whether people really
> do have OSF/1 binaries. It was really useful early on as a source of
> known-good binaries to test with, but I'm not convinced it's still in
> use.
>
> It's not like there were OSF/1 binaries that we didn't havce access to
> natively (well, there _were_ special ones that didn't have open source
> versions, but most of them required more system-side support than
> Linux ever implemented, afaik).

I don't have any specific examples, but I can well imagine people
keeping an Alpha machine for no other reason than the ability to run
some (old) application only available (to them) for OSF/1.  Running them
on Linux rather than Tru64 brings the advantage of being a modern system
in other regards.

For anything open source, there's little reason to keep the Alpha at
all.

-- 
Måns Rullgård