Request: make coff2omf free

[Frits van Bommel]

John Reimer wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Feb 2007 22:33:11 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> Why does Mingw do coff on Win32, while the gcc tools everywhere else do 
>> elf? This makes no sense to me.
> 
> 
> It seems that elf is an object /and/ executable format, so it requires
> support from the OS somehow.  

Only if you use the executable format. I don't see any reason it 
couldn't be used as an object format (unless PE executables need 
information ELF has no way to represent).

> Whereas coff is merely an object format and PE appears to be windows
> executable format.
> 
> That may be the reason that mingw went coff instead, even it it isn't
> compatible with MS coff objects.

IIRC mingw is compatible with *some* MS .lib files. It may be just 
import libraries, and/or just C libraries.
I remember there being *-msvc and *-mingw .libs for one library (I think 
it was Allegro or SDL or some such) where the difference was _what they 
were compiled with_, not _what they could be used with_. In fact, IIRC 
it was recommended to use the *-msvc libs even for mingw...