Optlink Contribution

[Rikki Cattermole via Digitalmars-d]

On 30/07/2014 9:17 p.m., Joakim wrote:
> On Wednesday, 30 July 2014 at 09:06:11 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>> On 30/07/2014 8:58 p.m., Joakim wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, 30 July 2014 at 08:12:17 UTC, Rikki Cattermole wrote:
>>>> On 30/07/2014 7:03 p.m., Kagamin wrote:
>>>>> Making dmd generate coff would make more sense.
>>>> +1
>>>> Most of the code should already be present in dmd, which makes it far
>>>> crazier not to.
>>>
>>> What makes it craziest is that there's a COFF32 branch lying around that
>>> nobody merges:
>>>
>>> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/mailman.1560.1323886804.24802.digitalmars-d@puremagic.com?page=9#post-llldfc:242q6p:241:40digitalmars.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It would be a far better use of Jonathan's time to get COFF32 merged and
>>> obsolete Optlink altogether.
>>
>> If we obsoleted the OMF format output we would need to have a free and
>> distributed with PE-COFF linker. If we can do this, I think Walter
>> might go along with it.
>>
>> Unless of course we could convince Microsoft to have a download just
>> for the linker. We could download that in e.g. the installer. Would be
>> better than a full install.
>
> I don't think dmd comes with a COFF64 linker now, users are just told to
> install Visual Studio or the Windows SDK for a linker. No reason you
> can't do the same with COFF32.  Optlink can stick around with OMF for a
> couple releases.  I suspect nobody would use it when given the choice of
> COFF32 support.

I'm in agreement with you about just getting people to install it. But 
the problem is, its not out of the box enough for Walters liking and I'm 
partially agreeing with him on this. At the end of the day, we don't 
really want to tell new people you have to also install x.

Also not to forget that we could also remove OUR implib versions of 
Windows Dlls. That would solve a lot of issues for people I bet.