[LLVMdev] Is there a separate linker for LLVM in Windows?

[Óscar Fuentes]

Don Quixote de la Mancha <quixote at dulcineatech.com> writes:

[snip]

> There doesn't seem to be a 64-bit port of MingW yet.  I would expect
> GNU Binutils to support 64-bit Windows if you built its source
> yourself - is that the case?

There are Debian pacakges for MinGW-64. I don't know if you can build
your own from Binutils sources or need to patch them.

> The key part of MingW that makes Windows development possible on so
> many other platforms is that they have written their own Win32 header
> files and C runtime library.

Header files, yes. C runtime library, no. Just the imports library,
which is enough.

> That way one does not need a Visual
> Studio license to use its library and headers.
>
> To do 64-bit development on Windows completely without Visual Studio,
> one would need those headers.
>
> However, there is a "Lite" version of Visual Studio that Microsoft
> distributes for free.  If it includes the 64-bit headers one could use
> those until MingW completes its 64-bit support.

AFAIK, you can do 64 bit Windows development (including cross-compiling)
with MinGW alone. Maybe it doesn't include 100% of the Windows SDK, but
should be enough for most cases.

So, back on topic, it is possible to link object files generated with
LLVM without resorting to Microsoft's linker. And it is possible to link
Windows applications on other systems too, all thanks to MinGW's `ld'.