Request: make coff2omf free

[John Reimer]

On Sun, 25 Feb 2007 10:58:30 +0100, Lars Ivar Igesund wrote:

> Walter Bright wrote:
> 
>> 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.
>> 
>> If you don't want to take my word for it, ok, but object files output
>> from C, C++, and D compilers are not executable - not on Windows or Linux.
> 
> Actually it is possible to dynamically link static ELF object files,
> although it is highly impractical and very slow. As I'm sure you know, on
> all OS'es using ELF, ELF is used for all stages, static object files,
> relocatable object files, shared object files (.so and thus a shared
> library) and executables. The difference is in which sections are present
> and in some cases, what content they have.
> 
> I think it is a good idea to have the same (and actually fairly short) spec
> for all these formats, it makes it easier to understand a larger portion of
> this part of the system in depth. I also believe the executables and shared
> objects are considered to be very efficient, and so it is likely that there
> has been a compromise on behalf of static object files, making them
> somewhat more complex.
>



Thanks for clarifying, larsivi.  That all makes very good sense.

-JJR