ELF is actually ARMs executable and linkable file.
it's not just for linux, elfs can be loaded with symbian and with WinCE oses too.
FASMARM is one great assembler and it's opesource so it can be tweaked up too.
i think that writing includes for both maemo5 and maemo6 shouldn't be so hard.
i will try to do some contribution for harmattan at least
+1 for this thread