TypeInfo and bloated exes - is MingGW toolchain the answer?

[Bill Baxter]

It seems to me that the MinGW tools are pretty much the best and only 
hope if you are going to abandon OMF and OptLink.

Implementing new object/link tools for existing formats from scratch is 
far too much work.  You can also forget about creating a whole new 
object format from scratch.  If you're going to replace OptLink it needs 
to be with something that exists and is standard.

But there's not a whole lot out there in terms of free code for object 
file and library manipulation.  There's OpenWatcom, which also suffers 
from being OMF-based, and apparently has more bugs than D's current 
tools, and then there's MinGW, which works with MS PE-COFF.

Personally, I don't see why on Windows you'd want to use anything other 
than Microsoft's format.  Especially now that you can get their latest 
C++ compiler for free.  Intel's super-optimized compiler is also 
compatible with this format.  Probably others are as well.

Other than the GPL license, it seems like the MinGW tools have 
everything one could hope for.  Is the license the only real problem?

Also -- one thing that I'm not sure about:  Would there be any 
difference between the current GDC and a hypothetical DMD that used 
PE-COFF and MinGW bintools?

--bb