Strange flag in WIN32 PECOFF

DJ Delorie dj@redhat.com
Tue Mar 15 18:30:00 GMT 2005


> I would suspect, without really knowing, that either PECOFF or
> DJGPP's COFF implementation is incorrect with regards to the
> original COFF specification.

Since COFF is otherwise pretty much dead, "correct" is a nebulous
term.  DJGPP's COFF matched what all the other binutils coff's were
doing back then (i386-coff was a popular embedded target), but that
doesn't mean it's "correct".  PECOFF matches what Microsoft was
producing for Windows, but that doesn't mean it's "correct" either.

The binutils tool "just know" which format they're expecting, so it's
never been a problem before.  In general, you can't just link DJGPP
objects and PECOFF objects together.  COFF differences aside, the
code's semantics just won't merge well.



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