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Linux Preparing to Finally Remove Support for the A.out Format
- Bostonian 5y agoI'm not a systems programmer. I assume the a.out executables I create from C or Fortran source code will work as before?
- geofft 5y agoYes, those are (almost certainly) ELF, not "a.out format." The "file" command will confirm that. The so-called "a.out format" is the format used by the very first tools to generate a.out files. Compilers still generate files named a.out if you don't specify a specific name, but they're in some other more useful format these days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.out
- mrlonglong 5y agoNot going to shed tears at a.out's passing. ELF is infinitely better.
- icedchai 5y agoI remember upgrading my Slackware boxes from a.out to ELF, back in 1996.
- mrlonglong 5y agoI missed that by a year, I only started using Linux in '97 with the 2.0.27 kernel and GCC 2.7.2.3. Those were the days!
- mrlonglong 5y agoI do, however, remember the pain moving from libc5 to glibc2. *shudders*