Hello, I've been very interested about the announce saying that DMD is able to produce COFF object files. Mostly because I'm thinking using some objects programmed in D in a software programmed in another lang, a bit like when statically linking a dll to a program but with an obj, to keep a nice monolithic executable.

First thing: I've tried a simple thing: compile an exported function with the args "myfile.d -c -ms32mscoff" and dmd complains that "-ms32mscoff" is not a recognized switch.

Second thing:
If I understand well, it means that previously, to link D a object with a soft programmed in another lang was not possible because the OMF objs don't include everything (e.g the objs coming from other imported static libs) and that now it's faisable ?  right ?

On Wednesday, 20 August 2014 at 23:56:23 UTC, Baz wrote:
> Hello, I've been very interested about the announce saying that DMD is able to produce COFF object files. Mostly because I'm thinking using some objects programmed in D in a software programmed in another lang, a bit like when statically linking a dll to a program but with an obj, to keep a nice monolithic executable.
>
> First thing: I've tried a simple thing: compile an exported function with the args "myfile.d -c -ms32mscoff" and dmd complains that "-ms32mscoff" is not a recognized switch.
>

32-bit COFF is only in git master currently. It'll be in 2.067 when that comes out. 64-bit COFF has been in dmd for quite some time now. You just have to have a copy of Visual Studio installed (the free Express edition should be fine) and compile with -m64.

> Second thing:
> If I understand well, it means that previously, to link D a object with a soft programmed in another lang was not possible because the OMF objs don't include everything (e.g the objs coming from other imported static libs) and that now it's faisable ?  right ?

They'd just have to both be OMF format if you wanted to statically link. If you had a DLL you could create an import library from the DLL and still link that just fine. Walter has a tool on Digital Mars to do it.  Now you should be able to directly link to COFF libraries.