Re: [RFA] pei386 dll: auto-import patch

[Christopher Faylor <cgf at redhat dot com>]

On Mon, Aug 06, 2001 at 12:18:41PM +0800, Dmitry Timoshkov wrote:
>"Christopher Faylor" <cgf@redhat.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Aug 05, 2001 at 11:09:42PM +0300, Paul Sokolovsky wrote:
>> >RC> 4) If so, how hard a patch to dlltool would that be?
>> >
>> >    I propose to deprecate dlltool - it stayed behind development for
>> >some time now (more precisely: ld's support of .def directives is more
>> >comprehensive than dlltool's, but you better ask DJ about this). You
>> >can do this now:
>> >
>> >> ld --shared foo.def -o foo.dll --out-implib=liba.a
>> >
>> >it does the job, but outputs undefineds:
>> >
>> >> Cannot export bar: symbol not defined
>> >> Cannot export foo: symbol not defined
>> >> Creating library file: liba.a
>> >
>> >It needs to be patched to suppress them. Note that -o is used to
>> >specify name to put into implib (alternatively, LIBRARY clause in .def
>> >can be used).
>> 
>> I think it is a good idea to deprecate dlltool.
>
>As I already pointed out to DJ ld can't handle forwards in a .def file
>while dlltool does it fine. Some time ago I had sent patch to dlltool to
>correctly handle -k (--kill-at) switch while generating .exp file. With
>that patch I was able to compile and link my very large windows project,
>while ld didn't work for me at all. I'm sorry, I didn't find time yet to
>figure out a weak/missing ld functionality.

None of the above really is an argument for not deprecating dlltool.

It *is* an argument for fixing ld however.

cgf