[parisc-linux] booting problems

[John David Anglin]

> Jeffrey A Law wrote:
> > 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> Okay, I can make that change, unless someone beats me to it.
> 
> > 
> > Though I'm a little confused.  I thought y'all were dropping the existing ELF
> > stuff -- I would strongly recommend it.  We're not even planning to keep the
> > existing elf32-hppa stuff building in gas/binutils as we work on the rewrite.
> > You're working with a totally dead and unsupported toolchain at this point.
> 
> Let me clear this up.
> 
> Yes, we are absolutely dropping any use of the current broken
> instantiation of elf32-hppa.

As I see it, it is a question of priorities.  The existing elf32-hppa
tools are the only ones which currently allow cross development
due to the lack of gnu linker supporting SOM.  If a SOM linker were
available, cross development could be done using the more developed
and tested SOM tools.  However, according to the comments in binutils/bfd,
the bfd architecture is incapable of performing all types of SOM
relocations.  A SOM linker also needs to be stream based.  Thus,
it appears difficult (impossible?) to build a SOM linker using the
bfd architecture.  On the other hand, the elf32-hppa tools have serious
deficiencies and are about to be completely rewritten.  Might it not be
better to develop a SOM linker rather than rewrite the elf stuff?

Dave
-- 
J. David Anglin                                  dave.anglin@nrc.ca
National Research Council of Canada              (613) 990-0752 (FAX: 952-6605)