Re: [Patch] Add --identify option to dlltool

[Brian Dessent <brian at dessent dot net>]

Kai Tietz wrote:

> I thought about this kind of extension. But wouldn't it be better (at
> least for COFF targets) to use the .drectve Section in object.

It's not an extension.  The information is already there in the import
lib, the new flag just provides a straightforward way to dump it out. 
Why does it make any sense to add a .drectve section to objects in the
import lib and duplicate the information in two places?  And besides, it
would mean that you'd have to rebuild every existing import lib out
there in the wild in order for 'dlltool --identify' to work.  The whole
point of adding this flag is so that libtool can use it, and that goal
isn't met very well if the flag only works with import libs newly
created with bleeding edge tools and not all the existing regular import
libs.

> By this
> we could even add to the compiler a pragma to specify import library
> dependencies.

But that's orthogonal to the problem at hand.  You're talking about
being able to do the MS style trick of being able to supply linker
options in the source code, e.g. #pragma comment(lib,"ws2_32.lib") or
#pragma comment(linker,"/ENTRY:foobar").  This feature is about being
able to map an import lib back to its corresponding DLL.  I don't see
how the two are related.

Brian