As noted in PR 14316, collect2 doesn't build on Windows due to the use
of vfork. There have been at least two patches to address this, one
of them from me, one from Zack.
My patch is here:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-03/msg01445.html
Zack had some comments:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-04/msg00227.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-04/msg00637.html
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-04/msg01044.html
And at that point I kind of ran out of steam.
Anyhow, I've returned to the issue, and I've tried to put together an
interface based on Zack's suggestion which can handle everything we
might want to handle. I'm not too crazy about it--there are several
different requirements, and so the interface has again gotten kind of
complicated. It implements what collect2 needs, and I think can also
do most of what gcc.c needs to implement -time, -pipe, and
--save-temps.
At the moment I've implemented a Unix version. Versions for other
operating systems should not be difficult.