Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756017AbZKBQUv (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:20:51 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1756001AbZKBQUp (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:20:45 -0500 Received: from bee.hiwaay.net ([216.180.54.11]:17472 "EHLO bee.hiwaay.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755840AbZKBQUm (ORCPT ); Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:20:42 -0500 X-Greylist: delayed 558 seconds by postgrey-1.27 at vger.kernel.org; Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:20:42 EST Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 10:11:27 -0600 From: Chris Adams To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: FatELF patches... Message-ID: <20091102161127.GA1432522@hiwaay.net> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1577 Lines: 37 Once upon a time, Ryan C. Gordon said: >I wouldn't imagine this is the target audience for FatELF. For embedded >devices, just use the same ELF files you've always used. What _is_ the target audience? As I see it, there are three main groups of Linux consumers: - embedded: No interest in this; adds significant bloat, generally embedded systems don't allow random binaries anyway - enterprise distributions (e.g. Red Hat, SuSE): They have specific supported architectures, with partner programs to support those archs. If something is supported, they can support all archs with arch-specific binaries. - community distributions (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian): This would greatly increase build infrastructure complexity, mirror disk space, and download bandwidth, and (from a user perspective) slow down update downloads significantly. If you don't have buy-in from at least a large majority of one of these segments, this is a big waste. If none of the above support it, it will not be used by any binary-only software distributors. Is any major distribution (enterprise or community) going to use this? If not, kill it now. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/