Request: make coff2omf free

John Reimer terminal.node at gmail.com
Sat Feb 24 21:29:01 PST 2007


On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 21:00:55 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

> 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?
> 
> Since I have to support Elf anyway, it still leaves me supporting two 
> formats.


I don't understand what you mean about supporting elf?  Supporting
elf is only applicable to linux and other OSes (or so I thought).  We're
talking about dmd on win32 here. There is no elf format for win32, or have
I misunderstood the whole situation? Can a elf format be made to work on
win32?  Even if it could, of what benefit is that for linking with the
current set of coff libraries available (mingw)? (sure, I'd love to see
elf at work on win32, but I doubt it will help much with the current
situation unless elf was use everywhere).

I believe Mingw uses a coff format. Interaction with that opens up a huge
expanse of available mingw libraries for linking with dmd/dmc.  Supporting
elf on win32 would do nothing for it here.

Maybe, I'm just misunderstanding you?

-JJR



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