How can I create an executable .exe PE file manually?

Question

All texts on how to create a compiler stop after explaining lexers and parsers. They don\'t explain how to create the machine code. I want to understand the end-to-end process.<

Answer 1

Iv'e used "Wotsit's File Format" for years... all the way back to the days of MS-Dos :-) and back to when it was just a collection of text files you could download from most BBS systems called "The Game programmers file type encyclopaedia"

It's now owned by the people that run Gamedev.Net, and probably one of the best kept secrets on the internet.

You'll find the EXE format on this page : http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?fc=5

Enjoy.

UPDATE June 2020 - The link above seems to be now dead, I've found the "EXE" page listed on this web archive page of the wotsit site: https://web.archive.org/web/20121019145432/http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?al=E

UPDATE 2 - I'm keeping the edit as it was when I added the update erlier, thanks to those who wanted to edit it, but it's for a good reason I'm rejecting it:

1) Wotsit.org may at some point in the future come back online, if you actually try visiting the url, you'll find that it's not gone, it does still respond, it just responds with an error message. This tells me that someone is keeping the domain alive for whatever reason.

2) The archive links do seem to be a bit jittery, some work, some don't, sometimes they seem to work, then after a refresh they don't work, then they do work again. I remember from experience when wotsit was still online, they they had some very strange download/linking detection code in, and this probably caused archive.org to get some very wierd results, I do remember them taking this stance because of the huge number of 3rd party sites trying to cash in on their success, by pretending to be affiliate's and then direct linking to wotsit from an ad infested site.

Until the wotsit domain is removed entirely from the internet and not even the DNS responds, then would be the time to wrap everything up into single archive links, until then, this is the best way to maintain the link.