MS VC linker (link.exe): Why no warning for 32/64 bit CPU architecture mismatch?

Question

(Update: As per Hans\' suggestion, here\'s a suggestion to improve link.exe\'s behaviour, and you can vote for it if you have an account over there.)

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Okay, I\'

Answer 1

I think it simply complains about the missing symbol before getting around to checking the binary compatibility. That will commonly happen first, x64 symbols don't have the leading underscore since x64 doesn't have any calling conventions. Unless you use Microsoft import libraries, they don't decorate the symbols at all.

But I very much agree, getting the compatibility error first would be much more productive. No idea how hard that is to implement. Ask the guys who know and can make it work like that, post a feature request to connect.microsoft.com