TypeInfo and bloated exes - is MingGW toolchain the answer?

[John Reimer]

On Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:36:09 +0900, Bill Baxter wrote:

> 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


Between OpenWatcom and Mingw, we at least have something to think about. 
MingW particularly is not going away anytime soon and has a large
developer base.

This should be investigated. Of course, it's all rather futile if dmd
doesn't commit to outputting files in a compatible format for these tools.

-JJR