From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from list by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.71) id 1fnRlM-0005Er-UP for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2018 12:56:44 -0400 Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:4830:134:3::10]:51214) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fnQB6-0005ST-4M for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:15:16 -0400 Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fnQB0-0002IN-Dr for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:15:12 -0400 Received: from usa-sjc-mx-foss1.foss.arm.com ([217.140.101.70]:48012 helo=foss.arm.com) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1fnQB0-0002Ho-5g for grub-devel@gnu.org; Wed, 08 Aug 2018 11:15:06 -0400 Received: from usa-sjc-imap-foss1.foss.arm.com (unknown [10.72.51.249]) by usa-sjc-mx-foss1.foss.arm.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4C9E218A; Wed, 8 Aug 2018 08:15:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: from e120077-lin.cambridge.arm.com (e120077-lin.cambridge.arm.com [10.2.207.74]) by usa-sjc-imap-foss1.foss.arm.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 3DFF83F5D4; Wed, 8 Aug 2018 08:15:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: Recent removal of a.out and COFF support for sparc To: Joel Brobecker , John Paul Adrian Glaubitz Cc: Alan Modra , binutils@sourceware.org, The development of GNU GRUB 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> <20180808131659.GA1544@bubble.grove.modra.org> <643f686e-d568-978d-07ab-31a62336966f@physik.fu-berlin.de> <20180808135443.GJ2432@adacore.com> <4206dacb-2f78-a860-99dd-cffac1227510@physik.fu-berlin.de> <20180808142037.GK2432@adacore.com> From: "Richard Earnshaw (lists)" Openpgp: preference=signencrypt Message-ID: Date: Wed, 8 Aug 2018 16:15:01 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <20180808142037.GK2432@adacore.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.2.x-3.x [generic] [fuzzy] X-Received-From: 217.140.101.70 X-Mailman-Approved-At: Wed, 08 Aug 2018 12:56:43 -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: Wed, 08 Aug 2018 15:15:16 -0000 On 08/08/18 15:20, Joel Brobecker wrote: >> Again, I understand the problem, it's not the first time I am having >> such a discussion. There was a similar one regarding POWER5 support >> in Golang [1] and the SPE backend in gcc [2]. >> >> The problem is just that we are talking about code here that people >> are actively using so I'm not sure what the alternatives are. > > I only see two alternatives: > > 1. Someone has enough interest to step up and maintain the code; > 2. Use an older version of binutils. > 3. Use a post-link conversion tool to generate an a.out image from the ELF binary. > I think option (2) is a good option. It might mean that your host > system doesn't have that option out of the box, but you can still > build an older version of binutils separately. We do this all > the time so as to avoid depending on the host distribution to > determine what version of binutils we use. >