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Subject: RE: ordinal linking for cygwin ld
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Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2002 10:59:27 +1000
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From: "Robert Collins" <robert DOT collins AT itdomain DOT com DOT au>
To: "Ralf Habacker" <Ralf DOT Habacker AT freenet DOT de>,
   "Charles Wilson" <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
Cc: "Kde-Cygwin" <kde-cygwin AT kde DOT org>,
   "Binutils" <binutils AT sources DOT redhat DOT com>,
   "Cygwin-Apps" <cygwin-apps AT cygwin DOT com>
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ralf Habacker [mailto:Ralf DOT Habacker AT freenet DOT de] 
> Sent: Saturday, April 27, 2002 10:55 AM

> > > Or ld has a switch to explicit use ordinals (see other mails from 
> > > me)
> >
> > I don't see what such a switch gains. The hint ordinal 
> should provide 
> > the same performance as an ordinal-only-link.
> 
> By default ld does not use ordinals or linking. Only when an 
> import lib does not contain names in the _nm_vector, ld takes 
> the ordinal for linking (identified by flag_noname in 
> pe-dll.c/ei386pe.c). Thats what I have used. I have patched 
> ld to write the import library only with ordinals and ld does 
> the rest. Only an additional patch for auto-imported date was 
> necessary. (see the patch)

Well then, this is only half the puzzle. I can see what you gain from
such a patch, but as Chuck as indicated, it will cause -major-
difficulties in management. 

A patch to use hint ordinals when linking by name would be _very_ useful
though, as that would
a) give the performance benefit you are looking for
b) allow backward compatible library versioning as link-by-name does.

We'd probably also need to ensure that strip leaves the names in the IAT
(I wasn't clear from your other email whether it does that or not).

Rob