DMD - Windows

[Manu]

On 7 January 2012 11:37, Don <nospam at nospam.com> wrote:

> 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.
>

Definitely. I'd be happy/prefer to use VisualC's linker if the D
objects/libs were compatible.
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