• Manu (28/28) Feb 09 2014 So anyone who has ever done windows dev will know about MS's crazy syste...
• Adam Wilson (12/46) Feb 09 2014 +1,000,000

Manu <turkeyman gmail.com> writes:

So anyone who has ever done windows dev will know about MS's crazy system
where, by default, they produce object files that have an embedded CRT
reference, and offer something like 8 different CRT's to choose from.
Inevitably, you run into situations where linking different libraries with
references to conflicting CRT's causes link problems, requiring options
such as /NODEFAULTLIB and various other hacks and work-arounds.

With the DMD-Win64 implementation, it seems this catastrophe has finally
made it into D :)

I'm seeing this:
  DMD inserts a hard reference to LIBCMT in object files.
  Phobos contains some C code; when built by the MS compiler, also contains
hard references to LIBCMT.

This needs to be addressed. I think the proper steps are as follows:
1) Phobos has a choice; either phobos should not reference a particular CRT
at all, or produce a suite of phobos libs that match the MSCRT libs.
Is there a reason to reference a particular CRT flavour in phobos? If not
(phobos will work with any CRT choice), then the correct solution would be
to not embed the reference in the object files by using the /Zl compile
option when building the C code that links into phobos.

2) Just like the MSC compiler options (/MT, /MTd, /MD, /MDd), DMD needs to
support a compiler option to select which CRT reference to embed in the
object files. It should probably also choose the debug runtime in -debug
builds by default.
Finally, it should also support an option equivalent to /Zl (Omit Default
Library Name), so object files can be produced with no hard reference.

This will give users the proper amount of flexibility WRT CRT linkage
necessary when used alongside C/C++ projects, which is currently causing at
least myself a bit of trouble.

"Adam Wilson" <flyboynw gmail.com> writes:

On Sun, 09 Feb 2014 19:44:39 -0800, Manu <turkeyman gmail.com> wrote:

 So anyone who has ever done windows dev will know about MS's crazy system
 where, by default, they produce object files that have an embedded CRT
 reference, and offer something like 8 different CRT's to choose from.
 Inevitably, you run into situations where linking different libraries  
 with
 references to conflicting CRT's causes link problems, requiring options
 such as /NODEFAULTLIB and various other hacks and work-arounds.

 With the DMD-Win64 implementation, it seems this catastrophe has finally
 made it into D :)

 I'm seeing this:
   DMD inserts a hard reference to LIBCMT in object files.
   Phobos contains some C code; when built by the MS compiler, also  
 contains
 hard references to LIBCMT.

 This needs to be addressed. I think the proper steps are as follows:
 1) Phobos has a choice; either phobos should not reference a particular  
 CRT
 at all, or produce a suite of phobos libs that match the MSCRT libs.
 Is there a reason to reference a particular CRT flavour in phobos? If not
 (phobos will work with any CRT choice), then the correct solution would  
 be
 to not embed the reference in the object files by using the /Zl compile
 option when building the C code that links into phobos.

 2) Just like the MSC compiler options (/MT, /MTd, /MD, /MDd), DMD needs  
 to
 support a compiler option to select which CRT reference to embed in the
 object files. It should probably also choose the debug runtime in -debug
 builds by default.
 Finally, it should also support an option equivalent to /Zl (Omit Default
 Library Name), so object files can be produced with no hard reference.

 This will give users the proper amount of flexibility WRT CRT linkage
 necessary when used alongside C/C++ projects, which is currently causing  
 at
 least myself a bit of trouble.

+1,000,000

I don't even care which of these options is chosen, but something would be  
better than silently forcing one. Because MS is silly. This document has  
more details about the options on Windows:  
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/abx4dbyh.aspx

It should be noted that MS strongly recommends linking the Multithreaded  
Dynamic Link (msvcrt.lib/msvcrtd.lib) libraries by default.

-- 
Adam Wilson
GitHub/IRC: LightBender
Aurora Project Coordinator