"Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected]... > >>> That's correct. However, it'll be much more maintainable, >> >> I don't know how much redesign you're planning, but I can't imagine it >> ever >> being as maintainable as a pure d codebase. A less stable/complete >> linker >> that attracts more contributors should overtake a more stable linker with >> only a couple of developers that grok it. > > That's true, but we don't have that other linker yet. > > The other thing is, we just don't have a need for our own linker for any > platform other than win32. So what's the cost benefit moving forward? I > think it's easier to just fix optlink's bugs. >
You're probably right, but it would still be awesome to have our own modern linker. Just being able to use coff import libraries directly on win32 would be very nice. > I don't want to discourage people from trying to come up with a > replacement linker for win32 written in D. I think that is a great > project. But while a linker is a conceptually simple program, the awful > file formats involved make it unnecessarily difficult and there are simply > a lot of details and other things one has to do. > > Like I said before, it'll take a sustained and determined effort to come > up with a viable replacement for optlink. > Agreed. > >> What is the license on optlink? > > Same as the dmd back end. > > >> Can other linkers actually use this information? > > They can use the information, yes, but not the code. > That's interesting, I didn't realise this.
