From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=3.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,SPF_PASS autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 24DB1C43381 for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:08:29 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F364C206DF for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:08:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1727899AbfCKSI2 convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:08:28 -0400 Received: from unicorn.mansr.com ([81.2.72.234]:35172 "EHLO unicorn.mansr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1727008AbfCKSI1 (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:08:27 -0400 Received: by unicorn.mansr.com (Postfix, from userid 51770) id 5288814CEA; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:08:25 +0000 (GMT) From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Matt Turner , Borislav Petkov , Alan Cox , Matthew Wilcox , Jann Horn , Al Viro , Thomas Gleixner , kernel list , linux-fsdevel , "the arch\/x86 maintainers" , Linux API , Andrew Morton , Richard Weinberger , Anton Ivanov , linux-alpha , linux-m68k@lists.linux-m68k.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support References: <20190305091904.GB8256@zn.tnic> <20190305122218.GD13380@bombadil.infradead.org> <20190305134347.4be2449c@alans-desktop> <20190305145717.GD8256@zn.tnic> <20190305173134.GE8256@zn.tnic> <20190305181138.GG8256@zn.tnic> <20190305181808.GH8256@zn.tnic> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:08:25 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Linus Torvalds's message of "Mon, 11 Mar 2019 09:45:32 -0700") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Linus Torvalds writes: > On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 9:26 AM Måns Rullgård 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