Request: make coff2omf free

John Reimer terminal.node at gmail.com
Sat Feb 24 21:08:50 PST 2007


On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:27:38 -0500, Julio César Carrascal Urquijo wrote:

> Walter Bright wrote:
>> One thing that Microsoft does is keep changing their omf format. It's a 
>> full time job just keeping up with that, that's why I gave it up. If I 
>> ever do update the entire omf toolchain, it'll be to ELF/Dwarf format, 
>> not because I like them (they are overly complicated) but because being 
>> ubiquitous on Linux it reduces my workload.
> 
> Here's a random idea. Why not update the toolchain to support the COFF 
> format that MinGW uses? Not Microsoft's, not Borland's. Lots of 
> libraries support directly MinGW and it would help us a bit interfacing 
> D code with C or even C++.
> 
> Of course the incompatibilities between the different libc and loaders 
> will still be problems but those are workable if source is available.
> 
> What do you think, Walter? It's still too much work and not enough gain?
> 
> Thanks


Yes, this is what was practically suggested concerning updating the dmd
tools in another thread.  Mingw, at least, seems to be the next major
player in a myriad of win32 projects.  Following mingw would be the best,
(and only, in my opinion) way of attempting to implement a coff format
for a toolset.  But then, for Walter, this may return to the problem of IP
tainting, which continues to be a thoroughly disappointing problem.
Hesitation in that area keeps driving home why having an opensource
frontend is insufficient.  Mingw GDC, naturally, is the next best thing
since it supplies us with the opportunity to use all the necessary tools
inherited from mingw.

Nonetheless, I really wish dmd and dmc internals were updated to interact
fully with the mingw toolset.  The library support there seems so
expansive (most opensource projects these days seem to support both Mingw
and MS VC++).

-JJR



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