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HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 (DOSX)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 07.04.2008, 23:27

> > 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).
(BTW, I meant that it's impossible for us or anybody but Allan to fix the FILES= bug because of this.)

> 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.
Yes, I recognize you from other forums (e.g. FreeBASIC).

> And yes, Alan pulled the plug, this after several times to build a
> community to open source it.
I am not a Pascal user, and I don't use VP, so take this with a grain of salt:

Why would you "pull the plug" just because "not enough" people use it? Isn't that a surefire way to minimize number of users? Besides, isn't a handful more than zero? (I don't understand the details, obviously.)

> These communities failed to adequately
> maintain the RTL (though specially Veit K. did a good job), let alone the
> compiler, linker and debugger.
You have to give people time. And yes, some projects have more interest than others (e.g. Linux). Sometimes it takes a while before people start messing with things with their little hacks and improvements.

> 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.

What has to be done? (Not what would be nice, but what is a major bug, major flaw, etc.??)

> 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.
I don't personally understand why FPC has semi-dropped DOS support. Doesn't anybody use DOS anymore? Is it really that hated nowadays? Are other platforms (GBA, DS, WinCE) really?? more important? Did DOS coders forget everything they knew? (Doubtful.) So I don't get it. Of course, I'm not trying to be impatient (developers often have several things they are working on), just slightly in shock that working code falls to pieces.

> 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.
Yes, obviously, that has to be omitted in any public release.

> The only remaining interest would be some of the more arcane OS/2 related
> parts in debugger and linker, but to other projects.
Well, nobody has (yet) to write a FreeOS/2 (although such projects were barely barely started). Even FreeDOS still has plenty of room for improvement (and it's a big success, IMO). But yeah, how could it hurt to release only parts? At worst, it helps anybody wishing to learn a little assembly (e.g. size or speed tricks), at best it helps them implement something else useful (FreeOS/2??).

> Alan and 2-5 users are still reachable via VPascal.ning.com though, but
> the activity there is low.
Well, (no offense, not meant directed at you/yours) but even a discontinued "hard-to-maintain" working compiler beats a compiler that used to work but doesn't anymore. So at least it works and is free, so I can't complain. (NDN rocks!)

> 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)
Yes, of course! Plenty of projects (ahem, FreeDOS) had a lot of work to do to get up to snuff "back in the day". It's not easy, but you have to start somewhere (if ever). If it's worth it, even if hard, then it should be done. But starting is half the process and finishing is the other (difficult) half. "It's always difficult before it becomes easy."

P.S. If you're somehow implying that assembly is harder to maintain, that's not true. And plenty of people know (some variant) of Intel assembly. However, I dunno what assembler was used or how "high level" (e.g. MASM) VP needs. So whatever. (Disclaimer: I know some assembly, but I'm far far far from being a guru.)

---
Know your limits.h

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