From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from list by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.71) id 1fo6n7-00015Y-VQ for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Aug 2018 08:45:18 -0400 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:36450) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fo4B3-00080S-Lk for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Aug 2018 05:57:52 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fo4Ay-0004yc-Nu for grub-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 10 Aug 2018 05:57:49 -0400 Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::e]:33518) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fo4Ay-0004yS-Jc; Fri, 10 Aug 2018 05:57:44 -0400 Received: from 207.red-79-156-46.staticip.rima-tde.net ([79.156.46.207]:50598 helo=termi.gnu.org) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtpsa (TLS1.2:RSA_AES_256_CBC_SHA1:256) (Exim 4.82) (envelope-from ) id 1fo4Ay-00054g-1x; Fri, 10 Aug 2018 05:57:44 -0400 From: jose.marchesi@oracle.com (Jose E. Marchesi) Cc: Alan Modra , Nick Clifton , John Paul Adrian Glaubitz , binutils@sourceware.org, The development of GNU GRUB Subject: Re: Recent removal of a.out and COFF support for sparc References: <2d2f1c2a-1715-1348-c35a-ad562a3acbb2@physik.fu-berlin.de> <27449274-9250-97a3-1ff9-8b9c818659d4@physik.fu-berlin.de> <20180808015529.GP26457@bubble.grove.modra.org> <20180808133453.GB1544@bubble.grove.modra.org> Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 11:57:39 +0200 Message-ID: <87in4ir1bg.fsf@gnu.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/26.1 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] X-Received-From: 2001:4830:134:3::e X-Mailman-Approved-At: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 08:45:16 -0400 X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.21 Precedence: list List-Id: The development of GNU GRUB List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2018 09:57:52 -0000 > "git log bfd/aoutx.h" if you want an illustration of points I make in > my other reply on this thread. Exactly why I pointed out the need to have an offer to maintain the code as a condition. As a SPARC binutils maintainer, I supported obsoleting sparc/coff and sparc/aout targets back in 2016. The rationale after my support was that Solaris, GNU/Linux, and the other OSes running on the little sparcs (VxWorks, RTEMS, etc) are all ELF targets. It is reasonable to expect that any remaining aout-based systems still in operation will be using an old version of binutils, if they use GNU binutils at all. So the SPARC bootloaders operate on a.out images... as Alan and others already pointed out, there are several possibilities: a) To use an older binutils version to link the image with the bootloader. b) To link to ELF and then use elftoaout [1] or a similar tool. AFAIK Fedora successfully used elftoaout to generate the stage1 images until they deprecated the SPARC support back in 2012. Debian distributes elftoaout as part of the sparc-utils package [2]. There is of course a third option: to put back the sparc/aout support in binutils, and maintain it... well.. in principle I stand with my 2016 rationale and I won't be working on sparc/aout on my own time. So unless my employer decides to sponsor the sparc/aout support in binutils (I already made some inquiries) I won't be maintaining that code. [1] ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/site/linux-sparc/elftoaout/ [2] https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/sparc-utils