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Re: How feasible is it to port gold to mingw?
- From: "Joseph S. Myers" <joseph at codesourcery dot com>
- To: Greatwolf <gmane dot greatwolf at mamber dot net>
- Cc: binutils at sources dot redhat dot com
- Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 15:25:30 +0000 (UTC)
- Subject: Re: How feasible is it to port gold to mingw?
- References: <Xns9E44BF45A3CD6gmanegreatwolfmamber@80.91.229.10>
On Sun, 5 Dec 2010, Greatwolf wrote:
> how feasible would it be to port gold over to windows assuming someone
> is willing to take on this workload?
>
> What part of the code base in gold would likely need to be modified?
What you would need to do is define a way of representing all features of
Windows binaries in ELF, create configurations of the compiler and
assembler that generate ELF, have gold link this form of ELF and then have
a postlinking tool that converts the final ELF executables and shared
libraries into PE-COFF binaries that can run directly on Windows. (See
the model used for arm-symbianelf, for example;
<http://www.martin.st/symbian/> has tools that I think may include one
implementation of the postlinker.) There might also be comparatively
small and self-contained gold patches to run a postlinker automatically
after the main ELF linking stage, or you might make GCC do that somehow.
> How much work would need to be done? Doesn't need to be precise; I'm
> looking for a ballpark figure here. eg. would 20%, 50%, or 80% of the
> code need to be change due to platform specific details?
>
> What sort of technical knowledge would one need to be able to perform
> this task?
In-depth technical knowledge of both Windows and ELF ABIs would be needed
with experience of ABI design and specification work.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com