Re: Bug#1059870: aboot: Please help testing dropping a.out.h support

Hi Dimitri!

On Tue, 2024-01-02 at 17:37 +0000, Dimitri John Ledkov wrote:
> a.out support has been dropped in upstream kernel. However a.out.h
> header is still being using by abootimg tool via objstrip.c. It has
> support for both a.out image types and ELF. I have blidly dropped
> a.out.h support and made ELF support mandatory in
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]/
> but I have no way to build it for alpha or test if everything still
> works. Upgrades, installed systems, and cd-boot.
> 
> Could you please consider the attached NMU, build it and test it, and
> let me know if everything still works. Cause then a.out.h header can
> be removed from upstream linux kernel on all architectures.

I have actually already looked into patching aboot myself to deal with the
aout.h issue since I want to make the bootloader fully cross-buildable [1].

I will most likely just copy the relevant definitions out of aout.h, both
the generic and the alpha-specific stuff in order to both be able to drop
reliance on aout.h in the kernel as well as make the package fully cross-
buildable.

I would also prefer to get all relevant changes upstreamed.

Thanks,
Adrian

> [1] https://github.com/mattst88/aboot/issues/5

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