Optlink is on github

[Daniel Murphy]

"Walter Bright" <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:khbmkn$298s$1 at digitalmars.com...
>
>>> That's correct. However, it'll be much more maintainable,
>>
>> I don't know how much redesign you're planning, but I can't imagine it 
>> ever
>> being as maintainable as a pure d codebase.  A less stable/complete 
>> linker
>> that attracts more contributors should overtake a more stable linker with
>> only a couple of developers that grok it.
>
> That's true, but we don't have that other linker yet.
>
> The other thing is, we just don't have a need for our own linker for any 
> platform other than win32. So what's the cost benefit moving forward? I 
> think it's easier to just fix optlink's bugs.
>

You're probably right, but it would still be awesome to have our own modern 
linker.  Just being able to use coff import libraries directly on win32 
would be very nice.

> I don't want to discourage people from trying to come up with a 
> replacement linker for win32 written in D. I think that is a great 
> project. But while a linker is a conceptually simple program, the awful 
> file formats involved make it unnecessarily difficult and there are simply 
> a lot of details and other things one has to do.
>
> Like I said before, it'll take a sustained and determined effort to come 
> up with a viable replacement for optlink.
>

Agreed.

>
>> What is the license on optlink?
>
> Same as the dmd back end.
>
>
>> Can other linkers actually use this information?
>
> They can use the information, yes, but not the code.
>

That's interesting, I didn't realise this.