MB> After all this time one does not gain stability by removing
MB> a.out. The one "efficiency" I can think of to dump the a.out
MB> format is kernel size because it doesn't need the a.out loader
MB> any more. How much does that take? If you don't want it,
MB> just don't compile it in your kernels.
How about effeciency w.r.t one of the most important resources: The
valuable time of Linux developers. I assume there is a reason that
support for a.out is being dropped from ld.so: Some new feature that
would require extra time to not only do it for ELF but also for a.out.
Also they do it for free and thus for fun; you cannot expect them to
support old stuff forever and waste a lot of their time on this.
-- Peter Mutsaers Lucent Technologies, Network Systems plm@lucent.com Huizen, the Netherlands