Advantages of the Palm OS 68K Linker
I had a reader ask why he would want to switch a project to use the new linker in V9. In many cases, you might not, especially if you aren't having issues with your old project. However, there are some advantages if you do decide to switch:
- Frees up the build system's post-linker slot, allowing you to use the Batch Runner post linker to run a batch file after a successful link, or to make your own post-linker to do custom post-processing.
- Ability to use PilRC format resource without having to deal with the translation problems that going from PilRC to Rez to RSRC to PRC has. PilRC lets you specify some resources (menus with reused command IDs, for example) that you can't specify with Constructor or Rez.
- Ability to use .bin files in your project to directly import the contents of a file into a resource.
- The Palm OS 68K linker provides valid output file data to the IDE, so you can chain targets to do interesting things where you merge the resources from different builds together to make your PRC files. For example, you could have a main program build target, then use the merge capabilities of the linker to pull in that main PRC file and output modified PRC files with resources branding your app for PalmGear or Handango.
- Had to rewrite linker to make the command line tools. We couldn't provide a command-line Mac OS 68K linker, since there wasn't a command-
line version of PalmRez we could run.
- Since Palm OS 68K linker directly outputs PRC files, map files will show actual resource contents of the output PRC file.
- New linker allows reworking pref panels to make location of settings more logical, and eliminates duplication of output file name in two different panels.
- In V9.2, the Palm OS 68K linker will also take .sbin files that will automatically be split into multiple resources to avoid the 64K limit, which is great for working with large ARMlets.
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Copyright © 2004 Benjamin L. Combee
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The views expressed on this website/weblog are those of mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of PalmSource or Metrowerks.
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