GDC binaries updated

[Bruno Medeiros via Digitalmars-d-announce]

On 09/05/2014 15:34, Iain Buclaw via Digitalmars-d-announce wrote:
> On 9 May 2014 12:20, Bruno Medeiros via Digitalmars-d-announce
> <digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com> wrote:
>> On 07/05/2014 17:42, Johannes Pfau wrote:
>>>
>>> Am Wed, 07 May 2014 14:38:32 +0100
>>> schrieb Bruno Medeiros <bruno.do.medeiros+dng at gmail.com>:
>>>
>>>> On 04/05/2014 10:38, Johannes Pfau wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> We've just uploaded new binary releases to
>>>>> http://gdcproject.org/downloads/
>>>>>
>>>>> ## GDC changes ##
>>>>>
>>>>> As we merged the first parts of Daniel Greens MinGW changes
>>>>> back into GDC we now also provide initial (automated) MinGW builds.
>>>>> These builds are mostly unsupported and will likely have many more
>>>>> bugs than the older releases posted by Daniel so don't expect too
>>>>> much.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Glad to hear there is some progress here, but are there plans to make
>>>> this supported in the future?
>>>>
>>>> Also, what is the difference between Daniel Green's build, and the
>>>> native Standard Builds?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Daniels builds apply some more patches, see
>>> https://github.com/venix1/MinGW-GDC for details.
>>> The builds on gdcproject.org use the standard git sources of gdc which
>>> only include the subset of these patches that's necessary to compile &
>>> run a hello world program.
>>>
>>
>> I'm not familiar with the internals of compiler and runtime architecture,
>> but I'm curious, why is is that so many complicated patches are necessary?
>> I understand the D runtime has to access Windows API, correct? But that
>> should all be available in the MinGW target as well, no? Otherwise, what is
>> the difference here when DMD for Windows is compiled, vs when GDC is
>> compiled?
>>
>
> DMD x86 on Windows uses the Digital Mars toolchain for linking, etc.
> DMD x86_64 on Windows uses the MSVC toolchain for linking, etc.
> GDC on Windows uses the GNU toolchain for linking, etc.
>

Yeah, this much I knew already.

> Another potentially crucial difference is that DMD compiles directly
> to object file.  GCC requires an assembler installed.  This probably
> does make it easier for DMD to invented custom sections for its own
> abuse.
>

So it's not so much the D runtime (the 'core', 'rt', 'gc', etc, modules 
of the D standard library) that is lacking and in need of 
patches/changes, but rather the DMD frontend and code generator, right?
If so, I think I understand.

-- 
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros