Re: A symbol version patch for glibc 2.x compatibility

[Ian Lance Taylor <ian at zembu dot com>]

   From: Ulrich Drepper <drepper@redhat.com>
   Date: 11 Nov 2000 20:59:52 -0800

   Do I have to listen to some *BSD guy telling me what the Linux tools
   have to do?

This is the GNU binutils list.  The GNU binutils are not Linux tools.
They are portable tools.  I request that you keep this sort of
argument off this list.  There are many other places to create
divisions between the Linux and *BSD communities.

Like Philipp, I am perturbed by the way in which you sometimes address
issues on public mailing lists.  In fact, I have chosen to not
contribute glibc patches, because I do not care to deal with your
attitude.  Perhaps it is merely a language or cultural issue, but I
find it offputting.  You are not a binutils maintainer, and I
personally would prefer that you not discourage people from
contributing to the binutils.  To misquote, if you can't say anything
politely, then don't say anything at all.


David, I do more or less agree with Ulrich that there is no
requirement that the binutils set the EI_OSABI field to
ELFOSABI_LINUX.  As you say, the field must be set when there are
flags and values with platform specific meanings; the program
interpreter, though it has a different value, does not have a platform
specific meaning on GNU/Linux.  As a practical matter, you should not
need the EI_OSABI field to run a GNU/Linux binary on FreeBSD; you just
need to provide a dynamic interpreter at the appropriate path which
sets GNU/Linux compatibility mode.

That said, I do not think it would be incorrect to set the EI_OSABI
field to ELFOSABI_LINUX when the binutils are configured for a
GNU/Linux target.

Ian