Subject: MACHINE_GNU_PLATFORM now forced to --netbsdelf in
To: None <tech-pkg@NetBSD.ORG>
From: Frederick Bruckman <>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 09/20/2001 15:35:41
It's appears that MACHINE_GNU_PLATFORM on current systems is now
forced to ${MACHINE_GNU_ARCH}--netbsdelf in on certain
archictectures (PR pkg/13957):

# In order to identify NetBSD to GNU packages, we sometimes need
# an "elf" tag for historically a.out platforms.
.if ${OBJECT_FMT} == "ELF" && \
    (${MACHINE_ARCH} == "arm" || \
     ${MACHINE_ARCH} == "i386" || \
     ${MACHINE_ARCH} == "m68k" || \
     ${MACHINE_ARCH} == "sparc" || \
     ${MACHINE_ARCH} == "vax")

What's the purpose of that? No portable software can safely use that
value as a test for ELFness, as there's already a huge installed base
of NetBSD/ELF systems that won't have it.

Maybe we should consider not pulling in from pkgsrc/mk.
What do we really need out of there? Programs ported directly from
FreeBSD generally pull in on their own, anyway.