PE-COFF and import tables

["Vincent R." <forumer at smartmobili dot com>]

Hi,

I already ask a question about PE-COFF and import tables but I got no
answers.
So I am trying again.

When using arm-mingw32ce compiler (part of cegcc project),I have noticed
that some generated
dll have a weird import table.
For instance when looking at the dll libeet-1.dll (from efl project):


> arm-mingw32ce-objdump -x libeet-1.dll | less

0001a050       0001a12c 00000000 00000000 0001a94c 0001a298

        DLL Name: COREDLL
        vma:  Hint/Ord Member-Name Bound-To
        1a5ac       4  _fileno
        1a5b6      19  _strdup

 0001a064       0001a138 00000000 00000000 0001aa18 0001a2a4

        DLL Name: COREDLL
        vma:  Hint/Ord Member-Name Bound-To
        1a5c0     174  CreateFileW
        1a5ce     240  DeleteCriticalSection
        1a5e6     243  DeleteFileW
        ...
        1a782    1322  _strdup


I can notice that COREDLL file is referenced twice, first one with only 
two functions
in it (_fileno, _strdup) and second one with other functions.


What I would like to understand is how that kind of thing can happen ? 
Is it a binutils issue or does it have something to do with libtool ?

In my opinion that kind of things shouldn't happen because _strdup
is referenced twice and in this case how PE loader is supposed to handle
this ?
Could it be due to the fact that compiler/linker/libtool see this 2
functions
with one type in a module and with another type instead another one ? 

Another related remarks is the fact that when exporting some variables from
a DLL, I can see
the same kind of issues/differences compared to native tools.


Finally when testing with older binutils/cegcc, results were a bit
different because if I
go back to the first problem instead of having twince the same DLL
(COREDLL) I had :

The Import Tables (interpreted .idata section contents)
 vma:            Hint    Time      Forward  DLL       First
                 Table   Stamp     Chain    Name      Thunk
 00016000       000160a4 00000000 00000000 0001679c 000161fc

        DLL Name: coredll.dll
        vma:  Hint/Ord Member-Name Bound-To
        16350       4  _fileno
        1635a      20  _strdup

 00016014       000160b4 00000000 00000000 0001684c 0001620c

        DLL Name: COREDLL
        vma:  Hint/Ord Member-Name Bound-To


So during these days there was a slight differences in naming and that
could explain why
it was working even if it was already generating a wrong format.

If a PE-COFF expert could give his opinion, it would help me a lot.