[patch] msvc demangling binutils

Aaron W. LaFramboise aaron98wiridge9@aaronwl.com
Thu Jul 15 22:15:00 GMT 2004


Nick Clifton wrote:
>>It uses a win32 API call to UnDecorateSymbolName.
> 
> Sorry - but that is unacceptable.  It is making use of proprietary 
> software.  The binutils project needs to be able to be built and run 
> purely using GPL'ed sources.

Is this true even if UnDecorateSymbolName is in a library that is
normally distributed with the operating system?  I think it meets the
GPL OS exception.  The complication is that not all older systems have
it, and on those that don't, its availible as a download from Microsoft.

That doesn't really matter, though, because theres another way to do
this.  Eric Pouech emailed me to let me know theres an apparently
undocumented function call in the standard msvcrt, which is definitely
considered to be part of the system, and present for all modern
i686-pc-mingw32 targets, that apparently does the same thing.

I haven't gotten around to messing with this, but when I do, I plan on
submitting a patch.

Aaron W. LaFramboise



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