PATCH: allow PE executables to have an export table

[Fabrizio Gennari]

Current version of ld has a limitation: PE executables generated by ld never
have an export table, although PE shared libraries (DLLs) have one. In fact,
an export table in an executable file is perfectly legitimate
(http://spiff.tripnet.se/~iczelion/files/pe1.zip says: "Executables may of
course also have exported symbols but usually they don't"), and Microsoft's
tools cl.exe and link.exe are able to create .EXE files with an export
table.

With this patch, ld puts an export table in the PE executable files it
generates, as long as there is at least one exported function. The behaviour
is unchanged when there are no exported functions, which is the vast
majority of cases. The patch has only been tested with Intel i386 PE files,
no other processors have been tested.

Regards
Fabrizio Gennari
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed...
Name: ld-patch.txt
URL: <https://sourceware.org/pipermail/binutils/attachments/20021215/42f2dd88/attachment.txt>