> I show how ELF-like features can be safely retrofitted onto executable formats contemporary with ELF’s debut.
I am surprised at the naïvité of the author on this question as from his photo he probably lived through this transition in real time. The statement ignores the whole point, sort of liking saying “all modern computers are basically Turing machines.” True, but not insightful.
It was no surprise to anyone at the time that various other required features could be jammed into other approaches (well, not a.out which is too simple) and often were in ad hoc and incompatible ways. In fact I designed the bfd library specifically with this in mind, to try to give some generality to object file generation and manipulation.
ELF was designed by committee, but it is not a camel. It addresses a number of complex issues in a standard and extensible way. Issues that didn’t arise on a time shared PDP-11 in the 1970s.
I am surprised at the naïvité of the author on this question as from his photo he probably lived through this transition in real time. The statement ignores the whole point, sort of liking saying “all modern computers are basically Turing machines.” True, but not insightful.
It was no surprise to anyone at the time that various other required features could be jammed into other approaches (well, not a.out which is too simple) and often were in ad hoc and incompatible ways. In fact I designed the bfd library specifically with this in mind, to try to give some generality to object file generation and manipulation.
ELF was designed by committee, but it is not a camel. It addresses a number of complex issues in a standard and extensible way. Issues that didn’t arise on a time shared PDP-11 in the 1970s.