From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964918AbXBLOBd (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:01:33 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S964930AbXBLOBd (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:01:33 -0500 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:38398 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964918AbXBLOBd (ORCPT ); Mon, 12 Feb 2007 09:01:33 -0500 Message-ID: <45D07457.9030006@zytor.com> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:06:15 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.9 (X11/20070102) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Eric W. Biederman" CC: Etienne Lorrain , vgoyal@in.ibm.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Re : [PATCH] Compressed ia32 ELF file generation for loading by Gujin 1/3 References: <687898.45581.qm@web26907.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > With ELF we get a single file format that works on multiple > architectures and for multiple OS-s, with well understood rules. This > allows for a broader audience who can review and maintain the code. > In addition to the real possibility of multi-architecture or multi-os > bootloaders. > Well understood MAYBE (although the "virtual" versus "physical" address stuff in ELF is clearly misspecified in the extreme), but they are clearly not sufficient for presenting a well-defined entry condition. So it's not really anywhere near as straightforward as you make it sound. -hpa