Re: [coLinux-devel] DDK missing...

[Dan A. <da...@gm...>]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 10:53:10AM -0800, ePAc wrote:

> now i'm stuck. it appears that since Jan 4th 2004, the Windows DDK is
> payware. you can buy the CD, but no longer download it unless you have
> access to MSDN (about $700 for the basic new subscription to the required
> level to get the DDK). that's a little arsh for something that used to be
> free...
> 

Yeah, that's a problem. We currently depend on the DDK in order to link the 
sys file in the final linkage stage of the driver.

<cough> ed2k://|file|Microsoft Windows 2000 DDK - Driver Development 
Kit.exe|68905688|661645e0c800fa55604765ad41844668| </cough>

Some background: Fortunately, the cygwin gcc toolchain outputs a valid COFF 
file to be passed as input to Microsoft's linker, so that coLinux's build
system basicly compiles the driver using the toolchain just until the 
final stage where it produces driver.o. Then, that file is passed to the 
DDK in order to be linked into linux.sys.

I thought about 2 methods that can help us get rid of this dependency.

 * Try to use the cygwin toolchain solely in order to link a valid 
   linux.sys. ReactOS's developers use this method in order to link their 
   Windows-compatible drivers that load on ReactOS. 

   However, Windows does more sanity checks when loading a driver than
   ReactOS, and because of that, I have yet managed to produced a .sys
   file that Windows will accept using this method.

 * Write a util that converts a .o file to a .sys file. After driver.o 
   is linked with libntoskrnl.a and libhal.a using cygwin's ld, an .o 
   file with no undefined symbols is produced - which means that no 
   other input files are needed, and this .o file contains all the 
   information that is needed in order to produce the .sys.

Which method sounds more plausible? The first probably involves modifying 
existing binutils code. The second involves writing a separate util, but
requires a rather complete knowledge about the file format and structures.

-- 
Dan Aloni
da...@gm...