On Monday, 18 June 2012 at 17:51:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/17/2012 3:34 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> 1. DMD can only output OMF binaries
>> 2. DMD cannot output 64bit code for Windows
>> 3. DMD is not compatible with the MSVC linker or runtime
>
>
> I intend to fix all of those, at least for 64 bit Windows, in the near term.

COFF and 64 bit support for windows are on the top of my wish list for D, so this is great news! A few questions:

What do you mean by 'at least for 64 bit windows'? No COFF support when targeting, or building on, 32 bit?

'in the near term': I know it's a hard question, but does that mean a few months, or more like a year?

Perhaps we could look into writing a COFF linker in D to replace optlink, that way OMF support can be dropped completely. It'd be cool to have part of the toolchain written in D itself. It's not a high priority though, since the MS linker comes with the free Express editions of Visual Studio.

Anyways, this is really exiting. It'll greatly ease use of C libraries on windows, even open-source ones, because most don't compile out-of-the-box with dmc.

On 6/19/2012 7:16 AM, Rene Zwanenburg wrote:
> On Monday, 18 June 2012 at 17:51:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>> On 6/17/2012 3:34 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>> 1. DMD can only output OMF binaries
>>> 2. DMD cannot output 64bit code for Windows
>>> 3. DMD is not compatible with the MSVC linker or runtime
>>
>>
>> I intend to fix all of those, at least for 64 bit Windows, in the near term.
>
> COFF and 64 bit support for windows are on the top of my wish list for D, so
> this is great news! A few questions:
>
> What do you mean by 'at least for 64 bit windows'? No COFF support when
> targeting, or building on, 32 bit?

Right. Frankly, I think the future is all 64 bits. That future is already here on the Mac, where supporting 32 bits seems more and more of a backwater.


> 'in the near term': I know it's a hard question, but does that mean a few
> months, or more like a year?

On the order of months.

> Perhaps we could look into writing a COFF linker in D to replace optlink, that
> way OMF support can be dropped completely. It'd be cool to have part of the
> toolchain written in D itself.

I'd love to do that, but I can't spare the month or so to do it.

Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/19/2012 7:16 AM, Rene Zwanenburg wrote:
>> On Monday, 18 June 2012 at 17:51:39 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> On 6/17/2012 3:34 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>> 1. DMD can only output OMF binaries
>>>> 2. DMD cannot output 64bit code for Windows
>>>> 3. DMD is not compatible with the MSVC linker or runtime
>>>
>>>
>>> I intend to fix all of those, at least for 64 bit Windows, in the
>>> near term.
>>
>> COFF and 64 bit support for windows are on the top of my wish list for
>> D, so
>> this is great news! A few questions:
>>
>> What do you mean by 'at least for 64 bit windows'? No COFF support when
>> targeting, or building on, 32 bit?
>
> Right. Frankly, I think the future is all 64 bits. That future is
> already here on the Mac, where supporting 32 bits seems more and more of
> a backwater.
>
>
>> 'in the near term': I know it's a hard question, but does that mean a few
>> months, or more like a year?
>
> On the order of months.
>
>> Perhaps we could look into writing a COFF linker in D to replace
>> optlink, that
>> way OMF support can be dropped completely. It'd be cool to have part
>> of the
>> toolchain written in D itself.
>
> I'd love to do that, but I can't spare the month or so to do it.

Is there any reason we the community could not do this work? You need to focus on the compiler. And with the ability to use the linkers available on each system, the need for this drops drastically. The primary use case would become portability and special case features.

-- 
Adam Wilson
IRC: LightBender
Project Coordinator
The Horizon Project
http://www.thehorizonproject.org/

On 6/19/2012 11:33 AM, Adam Wilson wrote:
> Is there any reason we the community could not do this work? You need to focus
> on the compiler. And with the ability to use the linkers available on each
> system, the need for this drops drastically. The primary use case would become
> portability and special case features.

No, there's no reason the community could not do it.

On 2012-06-18 19:50, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/17/2012 3:34 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>> 1. DMD can only output OMF binaries
>> 2. DMD cannot output 64bit code for Windows
>> 3. DMD is not compatible with the MSVC linker or runtime
>
>
> I intend to fix all of those, at least for 64 bit Windows, in the near
> term.
>

Now why isn't that on the dlang.org site in a road map or similar. Why do we always need to dig deep in threads like this on the newsgroup to found this useful information. This is probably so important that we can have it on the front page. Something like "What's currently being worked on" and "Latest news".

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg