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Date:      Tue, 23 Nov 1999 21:49:00 +0800
From:      Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au>
To:        Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@scc.nl>
Cc:        freebsd-arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Cross-building (was: cross compilation goals) 
Message-ID:  <19991123134900.D962E1CC8@overcee.netplex.com.au>
In-Reply-To: Message from Marcel Moolenaar <marcel@scc.nl>  of "Tue, 23 Nov 1999 14:25:30 %2B0100." <383A95CA.AC00E8B@scc.nl> 

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Marcel Moolenaar wrote:

> 1. Remove support for /etc/objformat
> ------------------------------------
> 
> The reasons for this change are:
> o  /etc/objformat does not exist anymore,
> o  It interferes with cross-compilation.
> 
> The last bullet is explained by the following situation: Assume we want
> to (source) upgrade from 3.0-RELEASE to -current. The machine has
> /etc/objformat which contains OBJFORMAT=aout...
> 
> The functionality lost by this removal is nicely covered by the ability
> to specify OBJFORMAT in the environment.

I'm not so sure about this particular change, and this part is far from
complete.  /etc/objformat is referred to from quite a number of places
including libc (see getobjformat(3)) and the *.mk files, documentation and
(I believe) a book.

The purpose of /etc/objformat is to allow overriding <machine/param.h> which
defines the system default format.  Since it isn't practical to recompile the
system to change the default for some development task for a few days, we have
an override of the default.

role.  It's purpose was to allow conditional overrides.  Certain places in
the source tree had "OBJFORMAT?= foo" which meant that the default for a
given part of the tree would be changed unless the builder had explicitly
set it.  This used to be more "magic" than it is today, but I still feel
it's useful to have the two seperate.

Finally, as you say, we don't ship with the file present by default, so it
doesn't interfere with cross builds.  I don't see why it has to be killed..

Cheers,
-Peter






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