You can use @ordinal to specify that a number, and not the function name, will go into the DLL's export table. Many Windows DLLs export ordinals to support legacy code. It was common to use ordinals in 16-bit Windows code, because it can help minimize the size of a DLL. We don’t recommend exporting functions by ordinal unless your DLL’s clients need it for legacy support. Because the .LIB file will contain the mapping between

#5987: Too many symbols in ghc package DLL ---------------------------------+---------------------------------------- Reporter: igloo | Owner: Type: bug | Status: new Priority: normal | Milestone: 8.0.1 Component: Compiler | Version: 7.5 Resolution: | Keywords: Operating System: Windows | Architecture: Unknown/Multiple Type of failure: None/Unknown | Test Case: Blocked By: | Blocking: 5355 Related Tickets: | Differential Rev(s): Wiki Page: | ---------------------------------+---------------------------------------- Changes (by bgamari): * owner: thoughtpolice => * priority: high => normal Comment: Demoting priority as we have disabled dynamic linking on Windows (see comment:29). My understanding of this situation is that it is not an intrinsic limitation of PE. The relevant data structures are the `.edata` and `.idata` tables which are defined in sections 63 and 64 of the PE/COFF specification. The specification specifies that one means of referring to exported symbols is via a 16-bit ordinal. However, this is not the only way; if the lookup fails the loader will fall back to a standard name search. Indeed, Microsoft even explicitly says that ordinals [[https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hyx1zcd3.aspx|are a legacy artifact]] and their use is discouraged in new code (this document describes the `.def` format, but the idea still applies), the ordinal and the function, you can use the function name as you normally would in projects that use the DLL. For this reason I believe the problem is in fact that `ld.bfd` is producing DLLs with symbols exported by (or perhaps objects that are imported by) ordinal. -- Ticket URL: http://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/5987#comment:46 GHC http://www.haskell.org/ghc/ The Glasgow Haskell Compiler