From owner-freebsd-arch Sat Feb 24 22:26: 0 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from homer.softweyr.com (bsdconspiracy.net [208.187.122.220]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CD9EC37B4EC for ; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 22:25:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from wes@softweyr.com) Received: from [127.0.0.1] (helo=softweyr.com ident=Fools trust ident!) by homer.softweyr.com with esmtp (Exim 3.16 #1) id 14Wun2-0002F3-00; Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:36:16 -0700 Message-ID: <3A98A7DF.3E8FAA57@softweyr.com> Date: Sat, 24 Feb 2001 23:36:15 -0700 From: Wes Peters Organization: Softweyr LLC X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.2.12 i386) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jordan Hubbard Cc: brooks@one-eyed-alien.net, arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: ELF, OS and ABI [was: Re: sysctl kern.fallback_elf_brand] References: <3A96F984.7233C733@cup.hp.com> <200102240016.RAA02409@usr05.primenet.com> <20010223162903.A7882@Odin.AC.HMC.Edu> <20010224125044P.jkh@osd.bsdi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Jordan Hubbard wrote: > > I might also note that you don't need to play ELF games to get "fat > binary support" in a package system, the idea of a permuted name space > inside a package being something I've suggested several times in our > PackageToolsNG discussions. > > Basically, the idea is that if you have a random-access package > archive format (or even if you don't, it just being a little more > painful then) then you can frob the package directory information in > such a way that you encode names and property information into each > physical directory entry, similar to the way C++ mangles type/function > information into a global symbol space. That way a "fat package" for, > say, GNU bash might have a directory which looks something like this: > > bin/bash@arch=i386 > bin/bash@arch=alpha > man/man1/bash.1.gz@* > info/bash.info@* > > Where, in this highly contrived example, we assume that everything > following an un-escaped @ is the start of the property list > information which has to be matched in order for that item to be > extracted under its real name. That was covered in the discussion on the OP mailing list. It's a workable idea, but doesn't cover the situation of providing i.e. 4 or 5 different architectures in a binary on an NFS server. In this case, you'd want the package installer to rip out the ELF segments for architectures you're not supporting, leaving all that you are. It is interesting to contemplate whether or not you can fold together data segments for any differing architectures. -- "Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?" Wes Peters Softweyr LLC wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message