Re: Elf OS ABI Number

["Kris Warkentin" <kewarken at qnx dot com>]

> > Does anyone know how to get one of these?  I was rooting around on
Caldera's
> > website but didn't see anything.  I've realized that we need to have a
> > practical way to identify QNX binaries and this looks like the way to
go.
> >
>
> A fairly common question, to which most times the answer is that you don't
> need one.
>
> You should only be using the OS ABI field if you are changing the meaning
> of the ELF specifics for a processor (new relocs, for example) which a
> linker not trained to recognise these would be unable to handle.  It
> shouldn't be used to represent things that are encoded in the instructions
> inside sections (eg library calls specific to your OS, etc).

Actually, we do have a few things that are different - QNX specific
relocations, different MIPS ABI, etc.  It seems like having the ABI number
can do no harm but can certainly be useful.  The problem with things like
.note sections for identifying binaries is that a stripped binary can no
longer be identified.

cheers,

Kris