On 03/11/2009 20:39, Walter Bright wrote:
Optlink is written entirely in rather impenetrable assembler code, and
is resistant to understanding and modification. Hence, over the last few
months I've been very slowly converting it to C, function by function.
One might ask, why not convert it to D? The answer is that I don't have
a good test suite for optlink, so I have to be very very careful to not
make a mistake in the translation. That means do one function at a time,
rebuild, and retest, which means the compiled C code has to match the
segment, naming and calling conventions used in optlink. I made a custom
version of the dmc compiler to do this. Also, C can be made to work
without any runtime library support at all, and since optlink does not
use the C runtime library, this is useful.
Once it is in C and working, it will be trivial to translate it to D and
start rewriting it.
Anyhow, during this process I stumbled upon what the problem was.
Optlink was apparently trying to account for some Borland obscure
extension to the OMF. Remove this, and it works, although presumably it
will no longer link Borland object files (who cares!).
The fix will go out in the next update, if you need it sooner please
email me.
awesome news! Once Optlink is moved to C and than D, it could grow new
features like link-time optimizations.
