TypeInfo and bloated exes - is MingGW toolchain the answer?

[kris]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> It seems to me that the MinGW tools are pretty much the best and only 
> hope if you are going to abandon OMF and OptLink.

Yesterday, there were strong claims made about the DM Win32 obj-format 
(OMF) being compatible with a number of different linkers. I'm surprised 
it is so hard to track one down?

> 
> Implementing new object/link tools for existing formats from scratch is 
> far too much work.  You can also forget about creating a whole new 
> object format from scratch.  If you're going to replace OptLink it needs 
> to be with something that exists and is standard.
> 
> But there's not a whole lot out there in terms of free code for object 
> file and library manipulation.  There's OpenWatcom, which also suffers 
> from being OMF-based, and apparently has more bugs than D's current 
> tools, and then there's MinGW, which works with MS PE-COFF.

The one that I used was 4 years old. I've not tried the more recent 
version of OpenWatcom ... has anyone else?

> 
> Personally, I don't see why on Windows you'd want to use anything other 
> than Microsoft's format.  Especially now that you can get their latest 
> C++ compiler for free.  Intel's super-optimized compiler is also 
> compatible with this format.  Probably others are as well.

Very true. One big question (that's been asked several times before) is 
"how does DM expect to support 64-bit on Win32"? Perhaps OMF will have 
to be dumped one way or another?

> 
> Other than the GPL license, it seems like the MinGW tools have 
> everything one could hope for.  Is the license the only real problem?

Is it 64-bit compliant?

> 
> Also -- one thing that I'm not sure about:  Would there be any 
> difference between the current GDC and a hypothetical DMD that used 
> PE-COFF and MinGW bintools?
> 
> --bb