64bit linking on Windows without Visual Studio

[Joakim via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 20 April 2015 at 04:05:21 UTC, Jeremiah DeHaan wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> While browsing the other day I stumbled across a linker called 
> polink (part of the Pelles C suite). After only a few tries I 
> got a working 64bit Hello World executable to be produced using 
> it. The terms of service is incredibly permissive, and it looks 
> like we can use it how ever we want (though this would need 
> confirmation). I'm wondering if this could be a possible 
> replacement for needing to install Visual Studio along side the 
> D compiler.
>
> Thoughts?

There are three aspects of Visual Studio used for D's Win64 
support: the Microsoft C compiler to compile a few C files in 
COFF64 format, the Microsoft COFF64 linker, and the Microsoft C 
library in COFF64 format.  Replacing only one will not get you 
very far.