Re:x86: Deprecate a.out support
by reacweb on Friday March 08, 2019 @10:32AM
(#19338361)
We are speaking of userspace generated between 1992 and 1995. At that time, linux was installed from floppy disks. Do you think there is someone who still has a floppy drive, who needs recent versions of linux and who has so old programms still working ?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Linus has a policy: Don't break userspace. See https://felipec.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/the-linux-way/
That's a great blog post; it's not just about the policy, but talks about some people who disagree, provides a lot of links, and is just generally better than anything I could hope to write here. I'll only observe that I'm not endorsing anything except that that's a pretty good post. I'm just pointing out the context, not arguing for or against "don't break userspace" personally.
Linus has somewhat recently clarified that position regarding old stuff; they break userspace if the break has happened years ago and nobody said anything in the meantime about it. If you notice upgrading from 2.5 to 4.20 breaks your app, nobody at the LKML or any subsystem maintainer is likely to fix it.
A.out is so positively ancient that it's likely been broken for years, nobody is testing or using it in live systems anymore.