[fpc-pascal] Internal linker status

[Peter Vreman]

>> Please provide exact steps what you did to detect that it is not used.
>
> 1. Download the latest SVN revision from
> http://svn.freepascal.org/svn/fpc/branches/linker/
> (revision 3065 if I remeber correctly) and trunk FPC update as well
>
> 2. After I compared current trunk and branch version I have noticed that
> they are practically the same, except the
> enabled directive and last added hash class in cclasses.pas (which was not
> used), I have enabled directive INTERNALLINKER ({ $define INTERNALLINKER}
> )
> to trung subversion.
>
> 3. Rrename  LD.EXE to LD.BAK
> 4. Clean and build all trunk SVN reslease by ...FPC/make clean all
> 5. Install: ...FPC/make install
> 6. Compile example I sent from mantis issue 4922:
>
>>fpc -Sd demo.lpr
> Free Pascal Compiler version 2.1.1 [2006/03/28] for i386
> Copyright (c) 1993-2005 by Florian Klaempfl
> Target OS: Win32 for i386
> Compiling demo.lpr
> Linking demo.exe
> Error: Util ld.exe not found, switching to external linking
> Error: C:\pp\bin\i386-Win32\ppc386.exe returned an error exitcode (normal
> if
> you did not specify a source file to be compiled)
>
>> The -Xi is only needed for SVN trunk. For the linker branch it is
>> enabled
>> by default.
>
> I assumed that allowing directive will automatically use linternal linker.
> However, in this case, without explicitly adding -Xi whas unable to link.
> Please specify what else should be changed to achieve that behavior.

If you want to work with development code i think it is better to find out
it yourself what is going wrong. For me it works on all development
systems  that i use.


> Executable (of example from upper wrote steps) linkined by internal linker
> is 5 times larger than linked with GNU linker (suppose debugger symbols
> again, which BTW can not be stripped by strip utility). Please explain
> cause

The problem with strip is already fixed and merged even to 2.0.3. I think
you should do better research yourself first before immediatly asking for
explaination.

This is asking for explaination is exactly the reason why the -Xi switch
is not documented or publicly announced.


> of it and tasks ware on your list to produce final version of internal
> linker.

There is no todo list and i can never give timelines because my time is
too limited.


> Is there a possibilitie to currently produce smaller executable with
> internal linker?

It already does, especially with debuginfo included, see below. The
lazarus.exe is with the internallinker, the lazarus1.exe using ld.

-rwxrwxrwx 1 PVreman mkgroup-l-d 38997687 Mar 29 10:11 lazarus.exe
-rwxr-xr-x 1 PVreman mkgroup-l-d 64411405 Mar 29 09:56 lazarus1.exe