(Fwd) RE: PATCH: allow PE executables to have an export table

["Kai Ruottu" <kai_ruottu at mbnet dot fi>]

Oops, my mailer posted this to Ralf only when it was aimed to list
only...

------- Forwarded message follows -------
From:           	Kai Ruottu <kai_ruottu@mbnet.fi>
To:             	"Ralf Habacker" <Ralf.Habacker@freenet.de>
Subject:        	RE: PATCH: allow PE executables to have 
an export table
Send reply to:  	kai_ruottu@mbnet.fi
Date sent:      	Mon, 23 Dec 2002 12:23:07 +0200

"Ralf Habacker" <Ralf.Habacker@freenet.de> wrote:

> > I certainly did this in my previous job using non-gnu tools.  I had a
> > dll/exe combination that relied on variables in the executable being
> > accessible to the dll.
> >
> > I'm not sure why the question is important however.  Even if everyone on
> > this mailing list says "No, never done it", it doesn't matter.  The
> > functionality should be there because it is supposed to be there.
> > There's no reason to limit ld because no one can think of a reason to
> > use the feature.
> I have spend some time to learn how the windows run time loader works and I
> couldn't imagine that the run time loader is able to link a dll to an
> executable. When this is technically possible, it should be added of course.

 Another issue related to this is how to create PE executables with 
relocations
with GNU ld only.

	PE File Base Relocations (interpreted .reloc section 
contents)

Again "the functionality should be there because it is supposed to be 
there",
AFAIK.  The '--shared' works with producing DLLs but using it for 
EXEs doesn't.

The '3-phase linking' using also dlltool works but is a little clumsy...  
Using it
in Makefiles is easy but creating a generic script/BAT which does 
this seems
to be harder. Anyhow those occasional 'HelloWin' apps are hard to 
produce. 

So, are there any options for GNU ld for producing PE-executables 
with
relocations ?  The need for this in my case is producing Win32s 
executables
with MinGW and with additional import libs and startups for 
Win32s...  If there
already are suitable options, putting them into 'specs' wouldn't be a 
problem.

Many thanks in advance,

Kai

------- End of forwarded message -------