Re: [Nasm-devel] [PATCH] output: codeview -- change version number written

[Cyrill G. <gor...@gm...>]

On Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 07:26:23PM -0700, Fabian Giesen wrote:
> Windows Store and Xbox One apps need to pass WACK, the Windows App
> Certification Kit, and part of that process involves a tool named
> BinScope that checks the debug info of all object files making up
> the final executable against a list of minimum versions.
> 
> These minimum versions get increased periodically as new SDKs and
> compilers are released. In a patch 2 years ago, I made NASM
> pretend it was MASM and output a then-current MASM version number.
> 
> Well, the minimum version number has increased again, and
> periodically hardcoding a new random MASM version to keep BinScope
> happy doesn't seem like the way to go.
> 
> It turns out that BinScope does not impose any minimum version
> requirements on object files listing a source language BinScope
> doesn't know about.
> 
> I have no idea how to officially request a new CodeView language
> ID (or whether there even is a way to do so for someone outside
> MS). But experimentally, using 'N' (0x4e) for NASM seems to be
> working just fine and is far away from the range of currently
> allocated language IDs (which stop at 0x10).
> 
> Long story short, make NASM emit a source language ID of 0x4e,
> with the actual NASM version in the version number fields.
> BinScope is happy to accept that, and since the language ID field
> is purely an informational field in an optional debug info record
> that (as far as I can tell) is not used for anything else, this
> seems reasonably safe and unlikely to cause trouble.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Fabian Giesen <fa...@ra...>

Applied, thanks!