Re: Binutils 2.15

[Thiemo Seufer <ica2_ts at csv dot ica dot uni-stuttgart dot de>]

Matt Thomas wrote:
[snip]
> >Seems to me that makes mips-ecoff a candidate for deprecation and
> >removal in the next, ie. 2.16, release.  The same goes for all targets
> >that aren't actively maintained.  People are better served using an
> >older binutils release on such targets, because the older code is more
> >likely to work.
> 
> No they aren't.  NetBSD/pmax uses ECOFF to generate loadable kernels.
> However, those kernel are build using the ELF tools and then objcopy'ed
> to ECOFF.  Using an old binutils doesn't help.  While we can replace
> the bootblocks on disks to understand ELF (and we do), netboot'ed kernels
> must be ECOFF since that's what the firmware understands.

Alternatively you could do what Linux (or rather delo) does. It has
a small utility called t-rex which creates a tftp image with a fake
ECOFF header, containing the ELF loader, an ELF kernel image and
optionally a ramdisk image. This needs more RAM than booting
directly via firmware, though.

Another alternative would be to use elf2ecoff, which is sort of
a poor-mans-objcopy but good enough for converting Linux ELF
images to ECOFF.


Thiemo