DMD - Windows

[Don]

On 06.01.2012 21:02, Adam Wilson wrote:
> On Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:27:58 -0800, Manu <turkeyman at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Okay, so I was trying to link to a C lib, and I realised... DMD doesn't
>> support/produce VS compatible libs.
>> I should have realised this sooner, noting the cv debuginfo.
>>
>> So like... WTF?
>>
>> How am I supposed to use DMD in Windows in anything other than trivial,
>> self-contained programs?
>> VisualC is the de facto standard in Windows. All libs are COFF, and
>> (unless
>> I'm working with GCC) everything I want to link to is produced from VC.
>>
>> Let's also mention the debug info... Virtually every 3rd party tool
>> assumes
>> and/or works best with PDB debug info. Being required to run cv2pdb is
>> pretty lame.
>>
>> So... why no support for COFF libs, and PDB debug info?
>> Surely at least a compiler option would do the business if there is some
>> kinky attachment to CV and OMF :/
>>
>> I was hoping to start a project using D as a front end language
>> interacting
>> with my C/C++ engine lib... but I can't.
>> ... and now that I think if it... how do ANY programs built with DMD
>> actually work? .. How does it link to system32.lib, user32.lib, etc?
>
> DMD on Linux gets ELF with x64 support.
> DMD on OSX gets Mach-O with x64 support.
> DMD on Windows gets ... OMF with no x64 support.
>
> COFF is an absolute requirements when working on Windows, yet DMD
> doesn't support it. Everything, every programming interface, every
> application running on x64 Windows is built with COFF, the default
> output of every other compiler on Windows is COFF, everyone else
> programming on Windows is expecting COFF.
> Windows represents the largest OS install base in the world; and yet,
> Windows based D programmers are told that they have to dig up extremely
> esoteric tools from the darkest, smelliest, most cobwebbed corners of
> the Internet, just to be able to interact with the the rest of the
> Windows world.
>
> This situation is simply unacceptable.
>
> Everything else on Windows is COFF, if DMD ever wants to be accepted as
> a mainstream Windows development tool, it simply *MUST* support COFF.
> And no amount of wishing will ever change this. Without COFF, D will
> ALWAYS be hamstrung on Windows, even if OMF ever got x64 support. Every
> other platform that DMD supports got their native object formats. It is
> now time to get the native Windows format in D.
>
> All DMD needs to do is output the COFF files, any number of linkers
> available on Windows can handle it from there. It doesn't have to
> replace OMF and it doesn't even have to be the default option, but it
> absolutely MUST be AN option.
>

 From everything I've seen, COFF seems to be very closely related to 
ELF. A large part of it is identical.
In the old DDL project on dsource, a lot of work was done in deciphering 
the formats. COFF is a lot better documented than Mach-O.

IMHO we should be looking at adding COFF output to the compiler, not to 
the linker.