maintainers.
After we established our branding method of writing upto 8 characters of
the OS name into the ELF header in the padding; the Binutils maintainers
and/or SCO (as USL) decided that instead the ELF header should grow two new
fields -- EI_OSABI and EI_ABIVERSION. Each of these are an 8-bit unsigned
integer. SCO has assigned official values for the EI_OSABI field. In
addition to this, the Binutils maintainers and NetBSD decided that a better
ELF branding method was to include ABI information in a ".note" ELF
section.
With this set of changes, we will now create ELF binaries branded using
both "official" methods. Due to the complexity of adding a section to a
binary, binaries branded with ``brandelf'' will only brand using the
EI_OSABI method. Also due to the complexity of pulling a section out of an
ELF file vs. poking around in the ELF header, our image activator only
looks at the EI_OSABI header field.
Note that a new kernel can still properly load old binaries except for
Linux static binaries branded in our old method.
*
* For a short period of time, ``ld'' will also brand ELF binaries
* using our old method. This is so people can still use kernel.old
* with a new world. This support will be removed before 5.0-RELEASE,
* and may not last anywhere upto the actual release. My expiration
* time for this is about 6mo.
*
BFD is a an object file library. It permits applications to use the
same routines to process object files regardless of their format.
BFD is used by the GNU debugger, assembler, linker, and the binary
utilities.
The documentation on using BFD is scanty and may be occasionally
incorrect. Pointers to documentation problems, or an entirely
rewritten manual, would be appreciated.
BFD is normally built as part of another package. See the build
instructions for that package, probably in a README file in the
appropriate directory.
BFD supports the following configure options:
--target=TARGET
The default target for which to build the library. TARGET is
a configuration target triplet, such as sparc-sun-solaris.
--enable-targets=TARGET,TARGET,TARGET...
Additional targets the library should support. To include
support for all known targets, use --enable-targets=all.
--enable-64-bit-bfd
Include support for 64 bit targets. This is automatically
turned on if you explicitly request a 64 bit target, but not
for --enable-targets=all. This requires a compiler with a 64
bit integer type, such as gcc.
--enable-shared
Build BFD as a shared library.
--with-mmap
Use mmap when accessing files. This is faster on some hosts,
but slower on others. It may not work on all hosts.
Report bugs with BFD to bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org.
Patches are encouraged. When sending patches, always send the output
of diff -u or diff -c from the original file to the new file. Do not
send default diff output. Do not make the diff from the new file to
the original file. Remember that any patch must not break other
systems. Remember that BFD must support cross compilation from any
host to any target, so patches which use ``#ifdef HOST'' are not
acceptable. Please also read the ``Reporting Bugs'' section of the
gcc manual.
Bug reports without patches will be remembered, but they may never get
fixed until somebody volunteers to fix them.
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