[syslinux] Fair warning regarding the future of the COM32 format

[Tim Deegan]

> I just want to give everyone a heads-up that I'm considering removing 
> support for COM32 in favour of relocatable (-fPIC) ELF files, or some 
> other relocatable format.  This would allow one "ELFCOM" file to call 
> out to another, and then return.
> 
> Part of the idea here is to run the main syslinux UI and probably the 
> filesystem drivers in "ELFCOM" code, which doesn't work too well with 
> everything being statically linked to a fixed address.

That sounds great!  What kind of support will there be for dynamically
allocating memory when multiple ELFCOM modules are loaded?  I'm thinking
of the multiboot loader, which needs to allocate potentially quite large
amounts of memory and be sure they will be safe from other modules.

Tim.

-- 
Tim Deegan                           (My opinions, not the University's)
Systems Research Group
University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory