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HX-DOS Extender & Virtual Pascal 2.1.279 (DOSX)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 08.04.2008, 15:58

> > I don't personally understand why FPC has semi-dropped DOS support.
> > Doesn't anybody use DOS anymore?
>
> Very few. But worse, even less _invest_ in it. Not FPC or VP dropped Dos,
> but the Dos users did, by not participating in significant enough
> numbers.
A lot of people just aren't aware that FreeDOS is active and could use testers. They (especially Eric) have done a lot. It's not as bad a platform as it used to be (although there's always room for improvement).

And seriously, I find it hard to believe that with all the talented Linux coders out there, that no one has the skills to port more stuff to DOS?

> Somehow this loss for maintainers is more frequent for the MS platforms
> than for others. I personally think this is not so much MS, but more that
> the users on those platforms are more used to being "customers", iow not
> take part in development.
Well, it's true, a lot of people don't have the skills (e.g. mine are fairly limited). And of course you (usually) develop for what OS you use the most. But some groups only seem to target the "latest and greatest" (i.e. only "modern" techniques or x86-64 hardware, etc), which boggles the mind. "Oh, well, C99 exists, and even though we don't need it, let's require it anyways." (Meh.)

> And VP faced a huge "cleanup" stage first before a open source version
> could be released. The owner/maintainer tried to get this started a few
> times, and then decided he had invested enough time in it.
>
> And I don't blame him for that.
He can do what he wants with his free time. I don't blame him at all. But it seems silly to complain (not that anyone really is, AFAICT) about lack of developers when there isn't anything publicly available to develop.

> (copyright)
> > Yes, obviously, that has to be omitted in any public release.
>
> Which breaks the IDE and debugger, something the users most extremely
> valued (e.g. when compared to FPC those are the strong points of VP)
IDE isn't so important, debugger is but can be lived without (some people never use 'em!).

> > 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.
>
> You can still download the archive (see the above link). So there is no
> problem there. There is simply no development anymore. For that a
> significant investment must be made, and because the current situation can
> never be free, it would take years for the first usable version reached
> users.
I personally think "enhancements" can be ignored. If you want > Delphi 2 functionality, use Delphi (or FPC or GPC or whatever). So, I wouldn't blame him if he didn't bother adding new features. But even releasing the runtime library sources could greatly benefit somebody in the future (although I dunno who specifically).

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