| authors | Peter Tribble, Toomas Soome |
|---|---|
| sponsor | Joshua M. Clulow <josh@sysmgr.org> |
| state | published |
On SPARC (but not intel), illumos retains support for running binaries from SunOS 4. This involves 2 components:
- aoutexec kernel support
- libbc library emulation
There appears to be little demand for this capability - few or no users have any such binaries.
While the aoutexec component is relatively trivial, libbc contains a lot of code that is difficult to test. There is also a significant quantity of assembler. The maintenance burden associated with this old code is considerable, especially in the context of the various projects to modernize the codebase and the toolchain. We're carrying around a lot of dead weight here.
This subsystem also requires ucblib, preventing its removal. Removal of ucblib is not within the scope of this project.
This project proposes to remove both libbc and aoutexec.
It has subsequently come to light that the file libmp.so.1 is also present for SunOS 4 binary compatibility, and can be removed. This file is shipped for both SPARC and intel.
- Bug 12292 retire libbc