bugzilla 424 - Unexpected OPTLINK Termination - solved!

[Eldar Insafutdinov]

Walter Bright Wrote:

> Optlink is written entirely in rather impenetrable assembler code, and 
> is resistant to understanding and modification. Hence, over the last few 
> months I've been very slowly converting it to C, function by function.
> 
> One might ask, why not convert it to D? The answer is that I don't have 
> a good test suite for optlink, so I have to be very very careful to not 
> make a mistake in the translation. That means do one function at a time, 
> rebuild, and retest, which means the compiled C code has to match the 
> segment, naming and calling conventions used in optlink. I made a custom 
> version of the dmc compiler to do this. Also, C can be made to work 
> without any runtime library support at all, and since optlink does not 
> use the C runtime library, this is useful.
> 
> Once it is in C and working, it will be trivial to translate it to D and 
> start rewriting it.
> 
> Anyhow, during this process I stumbled upon what the problem was. 
> Optlink was apparently trying to account for some Borland obscure 
> extension to the OMF. Remove this, and it works, although presumably it 
> will no longer link Borland object files (who cares!).
> 
> The fix will go out in the next update, if you need it sooner please 
> email me.

Why not changing object format instead and using format acceptable by the linker from MinGW suit? That could free you from rewriting the linker in C, then in D and then maintaining it. Are there any difficulties (technical or even licensing)?