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FPC for DOS / FreeDOS (DOSX)

posted by Rugxulo Homepage, Usono, 11.04.2008, 07:14

> > A lot of people just aren't aware that FreeDOS is active
>
> If it is so active, then when didn't they step up? Either they are not
> interested in these packages, (except for Laaca), or have no time.
In case you haven't noticed, FreeDOS is mostly written in C (with a little ASM here and there). The official compiler is OpenWatcom, and the official assembler is NASM. It is (so far) more focused on mirroring MS-DOS compatibility ("BASE") than adding new features (although that happens a lot too). Plus, GPL is strongly preferred. As is, though, nothing much of theirs uses Pascal (although they include NDN in "UTIL" and Blocek in "EDIT"). So, their focus is mirroring what people already are familiar with, and lacking any reason to focus on FreePascal (since MS didn't have one), they haven't done so. Besides, they mostly do it all in their spare time.

The core people are more interested in refining things, updating webpages, online docs, FAQs, wiki, etc., improving the overall quality and packaging, HTML documentation, .ISOs, backing up files on iBiblio, etc. (And they migrated from CVS to SVN, Bugzilla 2 to Bugzilla 3.) It's also very hard to get things done (i.e. perfectly finished) when people move, are too busy, or have other priorities. And yet still, they get things done (just slower than we'd all like, I guess). It takes a lot more effort to polish, bugtest, and document something than just throw it together in one big hackfest.

> Either way you remain in the situation that the tool developers have no
> direct need for dos, and that the dosers don't have a direct need for the
> tool. Or how else do you explain the relative inactivity of Dos ports for
> FPC and VP then? (GPC is still maintained for DJGPP I believe by M.
> Lombardi, but that's the same guy that did it 10 years ago too, without
> much help)
>
> Apparently, Dos still has compilers enough, or sb would step up
Stefan Weber uses VP.
Laaca uses FP.
Jason Burgon uses BP7.
Jason Sinclair uses TP7.

Others (MegaBrutal, Eric Auer) seem to occasionally use TP55 (free version).

Maybe you should tell us exactly why FPC is better than all the others? (Obviously: better license, more portable.) Or at least give us some idea of what HAS to be fixed. It must just need more publicity, then.

> > > 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.
>
> This is unfair to Allan. Allan spent two years of very busy time (he was
> moving across countries) to try to build some community.
So VP is dead and FP for DOS is comatose? Not good. :-(

I'm not blaming him, I don't know all the details (obviously). It just seems like he'd release whatever he legally could and "let the users worry with it". That's what most developers these days do. But whatever, I don't care either way.

> > IDE isn't so important, debugger is but can be lived without (some
> people
> > never use 'em!).
>
> All then remaining VP users considered them of the utmost importantcy. It
> was the main reason to use VP over FPC.
VP isn't really DOS-based, and yet you're talking to me (a DOS user), so obviously I consider functionality over style and graphics. I'm more in favor of a working cmdline compiler open-sourced than none at all. All the other cruft can come later. For sure, you can live without an IDE.

> > 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
>
> The runtime library was also not copyright free. One of the larger chunks
> (except for TV) was sysutils. A project to port sysutils from FPC failed,
> due to lacking skills, and a lot of noise on the maillist about what
> should be done.
Well, obviously FPC trumps VP in a lot of ways (more ports, better compatibility, open source). I can understand your extreme pessimism re: VP in the future (and I have no huge hopes for it), but FPC for DOS hopefully won't collapse like that. I mean, it's GPL, how can it?!

> But the users kept arguing, and the discussion got crazier and crazier,
> planning the most difficult things (including rewriting the compiler), but
> were not able at the same time to port (not develop from scratch, just grab
> from FPC!) even a relatively simple piece of source like sysutils. This was
> the third time this happened to an attempt to revive it, so Allan gave up.
Has he tried FPC? Does he like it? Maybe he can focus his energy into making that better instead of worrying about other stuff. (Although I still say any asm code he has might potentially be useful, but whatever ....)

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