Re: More Windows stuff ... Gorm works ... sort of

[Sheldon Gill]

> > > ... but I still think that assuming advanced building features in 
> > > "core"  components is not a good idea.  Gorm is a "core" component 
> > > and it would be
> > > nice if it was very portable and worked almost automatically as soon as
> > > the very basic stuff is ported to a platform.
> >
> >
> >
> > Support for weak symbols are hardly advanced, they have been a feature 
> > of ELF
> > since it's creation.  As I pointed out before, it's Window's use of 
> > the rather
> > ancient COFF standard which is the real problem.

I wanted to point out that weak-linking has been supported by Visual 
Studio (MS tools) since at least version 6 which is quite old now. The 
problem wasn't just the PE binary format, it also had to do with the 
run-time support in windows.

The solution actually lies in the linker and a bit of library code, not 
the source nor the build system itself. It ends up working rather like 
CFM...

> Actually, Windows uses PE-COFF, which is still fraught with plenty of 
> COFFish limitations, but it's extended enough that weak link support 
> itself is actually supported by the spec. This is the support for which 
> Aaron LaWhatsHisName has recently implemented in GCC and binutils.

I didn't realise this had been done yet. I must investigate further.


Regards,
Sheldon