Hi,

This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?

To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as command line argument. The proposal is just to set another default.

This is now possible as DMD and LDC comes with lld and the needed libraries.

Kind regards
Andre

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?

I am om favour of this. It would help prevent people running into optlink problems such as this one: https://github.com/MartinNowak/scod/issues/4

Bastiaan.

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>
> To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as command line argument. The proposal is just to set another default.

I also think this is long overdue - but I wouldn't change dub's defaults, but DMD's instead (something like `-m32` on Windows meaning `-m32mscoff`, and a new `-m32omf` switch). It's a breaking change, but definitely worth it IMO. Besides optlink bugs and limitations, and the executable unfortunately being named `link.exe` and so conflicting with the MS one (and people running into problems when using LDC, depending on their PATH), I see the primary drawback in that probably > 99.9% of 3rd-party libraries out there are in COFF format (I haven't heard of that old OMF format from DOS times before playing with DMD).

On Thursday, December 6, 2018 10:58:17 AM MST Andre Pany via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>
> To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as command line argument. The proposal is just to set another default.
>
> This is now possible as DMD and LDC comes with lld and the needed libraries.

I'm inclined to argue that it's a bad idea given that it's not dmd's default. It risks being very confusing, and anyone who actually cares to make the change can easily set their dub configuration accordingly.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>
> To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as command line argument. The proposal is just to set another default.
>
> This is now possible as DMD and LDC comes with lld and the needed libraries.
>
> Kind regards
> Andre

I'd  wish this too (i also wish DWARF info in mscoff). Unfortunately last time i tried to built DCD using -m64 (and MINGW stuff + LLD) the resulting PE crashed, so maybe there are problems to fix before switching.

On 07/12/2018 11:50 AM, Basile B. wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>>
>> To be pretty clear, you still can compile to x86 OMF by setting the default architecture either in settings.json or as command line argument. The proposal is just to set another default.
>>
>> This is now possible as DMD and LDC comes with lld and the needed libraries.
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Andre
> 
> I'd  wish this too (i also wish DWARF info in mscoff). Unfortunately last time i tried to built DCD using -m64 (and MINGW stuff + LLD) the resulting PE crashed, so maybe there are problems to fix before switching.

Agreed we should hold off until mingw + lld stuff gain more maturity.
Then we can swap over fully with minimal pain.

On Friday, 7 December 2018 at 06:52:41 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
> On 07/12/2018 11:50 AM, Basile B. wrote:
>> 
>> I'd  wish this too (i also wish DWARF info in mscoff). Unfortunately last time i tried to built DCD using -m64 (and MINGW stuff + LLD) the resulting PE crashed, so maybe there are problems to fix before switching.
>
> Agreed we should hold off until mingw + lld stuff gain more maturity.
> Then we can swap over fully with minimal pain.

Thanks a lot for the opinions. Maybe we could check that e.g. all dub packages
compiles fine (and unittests succeeds) with LLD to check the maturity.
When we reached that level we can switch the default architecture.

I also like the idea to switch the architecture in DMD itself to avoid surprises.
And I really like to have a 64 bit DMD executable. Fortunately it is created
by the nightly builds, but having it as release download would be really great.

Kind regards
André

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>

The problem is that DMD -m32 always works, else you need a _correct_ install of VS to build the other archs and it's not always _that_ easy to have when you did things in an order that wasn't exactly the one of the installer.

please, no.

On Friday, 7 December 2018 at 13:11:37 UTC, Guillaume Piolat wrote:
> On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?
>>
>
> The problem is that DMD -m32 always works, else you need a _correct_ install of VS to build the other archs and it's not always _that_ easy to have when you did things in an order that wasn't exactly the one of the installer.
>
> please, no.

Visual studio is no longer needed as lld and x86mscoff/x86_64 libraries now included in dmd and LDC:)

We just need to get it mature.

Kind regards
Andre

On Thursday, 6 December 2018 at 17:58:17 UTC, Andre Pany wrote:
> This is mostly interesting for windows developers. What is your opinion of switching to architecture x86_mscoff or x86_64 as default on windows?

My biggest gripe is this confusing matrix of compiler flags:

      default  -m32     -m32mscoff  -m64
dmd   OMF      OMF      COFF-32     COFF-64
ldc   COFF-64  COFF-32  Error       COFF-64

The same applies to dub's --arch flag.

Currently, the default works out of the box and I don't want to change that. I also don't like the idea of changing semantics and break code / expectations of users that way. Maybe we can make the current flags for dub/the compilers undocumented and define new, consistent flags.