Peter Slegg wrote:
Isn't ELF one of the "holy grails" that opens up a lot of possibilities for VM and other stuff ?
Now we are speaking about ELF *executable* file format (absolutely not planned for MiNT). ELF has the ability to embed any number of sections with any name and any size. I see it more or less like a ZIP file. That's why ELF is a requirement for some system stuff: it provides a clean way for storing additional data in the executables. I don't know more about this.
About Virtual Memory : I don't think ELF is a requirement. Ancient UNIX systems were using Virtual Memory and the a.out file format. So I think Virtual Memory could be added to the FreeMiNT kernel without modifying any other executable (to be validated by a kernel expert).
On the other side, standard ELF executables need Vitual Memory, because they are compiled for a fixed memory address, and they can't be relocated because they don't include a relocation table.
-- Vincent Rivière