RFA: Recording MIPS ABI selection in binaries

[Jeffrey A Law]

  In message < 200008090030.RAA19784@elmo.cygnus.com >you write:
  > Hi Chris,
  > 
  > : as far as i'm concerned, there could have been better use of the 
  > : existing bits for ABIs (by enumeration, rather than flags)
  > 
  > Indeed, but as you say we are stuck with legacy code which we need to
  > carry on supporting, so I doubt if these flags will change any time
  > soon.
Correct.  For a number of platforms (such as many embedded MIPS chips) the
GNU tools defined the de-facto ABI.

  > : Personally I'd like to see the existing flags rationalized to the 
  > : extent that they can be, and improved from there, rather than
  > : perpetuate the existing morass and even make it worse by introducing a
  > : mechanism that's not particularly scalable,
  > 
  > The scheme is scalable.  In fact it is more scalable than the existing
  > scheme of using bits in the file header.  The sections can have
  > arbitrary names which can be used to encode pretty much anything.
Yup.  Or we can put arbitrary contents into a non-loadable section to
record information we care about.


jeff