DOS ain't dead

HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 (DOSX)

posted by marcov, 07.04.2008, 11:45
(edited by marcov on 07.04.2008, 15:35)

> BTW, VP isn't open source, so you're at the mercy of the original author
> (and I think it's more or less unsupported / discontinued).

I'm actually a FPC developer (and no, not for Dos , but I've had contacts with VP's owner (and maintainer in the last years) several times.

And yes, Alan pulled the plug, this after several times to build a community to open source it. These communities failed to adequately maintain the RTL (though specially Veit K. did a good job), let alone the compiler, linker and debugger.

And the core compiler is in pure assembler, 6MB of them, and Alan himself was unable to do major restructuring/enhancements in them. (a different programmer named Vitaly Miryanov did the original compiler work in the mid nineties). I've seen them, and they are totally unmaintainable. That sizeable body of code without much documentation (about internals I mean, not enduser) or comments...
Keep in mind that also the compiler of FPC was improving rapidly. Any team that can't get a new Dos/windows/Linux release of FPC up to release quality would be a total loss in the VP source.

While the IDE is in pascal and generally also interesting, it is too entangled with the assembler parts, and afaik also with copyrighted (Borland TV, the Pascal code is not free, the C++ code is different) code.

The only remaining interest would be some of the more arcane OS/2 related parts in debugger and linker, but to other projects.

Alan and 2-5 users are still reachable via VPascal.ning.com though, but the activity there is low.

These are also typical problems of open sourcing large corporate codebases, specially if they are from the nineties or earlier: quite unmaintable, and using commercial components that have to be replaced. Both requiring near complete rewrites. This is also why the heavily sponsored Mozilla project took years to get to the first milestone that was somewhat comparable in quality to the Netscape 4.x browsers (Milestone 18 to be exact)

Complete thread:

• HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - ho1459, 14.03.2008, 14:28
  • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - Japheth, 15.03.2008, 11:26
    • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - Rugxulo, 16.03.2008, 19:15
      • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - ho1459, 17.03.2008, 21:07
      • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - marcov, 07.04.2008, 11:45
        • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - Rugxulo, 07.04.2008, 23:27
          • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - marcov, 08.04.2008, 13:28
            • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - Rugxulo, 08.04.2008, 15:58
              • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - marcov, 10.04.2008, 10:02
                • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 11.04.2008, 07:14
                  • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 11.04.2008, 13:08
                    • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 11.04.2008, 15:50
                      • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 11.04.2008, 17:22
                      • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 11.04.2008, 19:50
                        • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 12.04.2008, 00:43
                          • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 12.04.2008, 14:38
                            • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 12.04.2008, 20:52
                              • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 13.04.2008, 23:36
                                • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 14.04.2008, 20:40
                                  • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 14.04.2008, 21:59
                                    • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 15.04.2008, 01:45
                                      • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 15.04.2008, 16:11
                                        • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 16.04.2008, 02:23
                        • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 12.04.2008, 07:33
                          • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 12.04.2008, 13:27
                            • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 12.04.2008, 16:18
                              • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 13.04.2008, 02:54
                                • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 13.04.2008, 09:50
                                  • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 13.04.2008, 23:17
                                    • Compiler debate - Steve, 14.04.2008, 05:51
                                    • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 14.04.2008, 08:49
                                  • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 13.04.2008, 23:18
                                    • Compiler debate - Steve, 14.04.2008, 06:00
                                    • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 14.04.2008, 08:21
                                      • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - marcov, 14.04.2008, 11:12
                                        • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Japheth, 14.04.2008, 12:52
                                        • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Steve, 14.04.2008, 15:05
                            • FPC for DOS / FreeDOS - Rugxulo, 12.04.2008, 20:34
    • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - ho1459, 17.03.2008, 20:56
  • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - Laaca, 15.03.2008, 18:56
    • HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 - rr, 16.03.2008, 19:12