DOS ain't dead - mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!)

mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) (Miscellaneous)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 11.01.2012, 05:47

> > > FWIW, a port of pdksh is also available:
> > >
> http://www.ilyaz.org/software/os2/
> > > dos_bin.zip has the one known to run on DOS, but maybe the EMX
> versions
> > > also do...

A quick look only shows sh_dos.zip, which I assume is what you meant. It is pdksh compiled by EMX, assumes OS/2 or RSX via execve() function call.

> > But it may only work with EMX, and that barely works on DOS. In other
> > words, it won't replace all the missing POSIX tools, LFNs, long
> cmdlines,
> > etc. for you, sadly.
> dos_bin probably would run, though I've not checked--it certainly did run
> once, well enough to build Perl.
> But this suggests that pdksh might be ported to DJGPP easily.

DJGPP has built-in support for LFNs, long cmdlines, and these are things that only work with DJGPP-compiled apps.

Sure, pdksh could (mostly) be ported to DJGPP, but the main problem is a lack of fork(). DJGPP already has "good enough" POSIX support.

> > > Also, ack just might be able to compile mksh on DOS--it can on Minix
> 3.
> > ACK doesn't have a DOS port, does it?
> ISTR seeing an ACK compiler under the freedos directory on ibiblio...but it
> might not be a port.

I don't know of any ACK on FreeDOS' iBiblio mirror, though I know at one time Pat made a Cygwin-hosted cross compiler for it (presumably targeting Minix's a.out, I don't think he wrote a new backend).

> A third option, that might not be wise, is building an ELKS shell, using
> bcc in DOS mode (bcc bootstraps all ELKS binaries, and it has a flag to
> output DOS .COM binaries).
> However, this would be 16-bit, fairly tight, SFN, and all that.

I think ELKS supports multitasking and fork() natively, something that most DOSes (e.g. FreeDOS) lack, so it won't be that easy. Same problem. Yes, Dev86 has a DOS target (w/ library), but I'm pretty sure it doesn't have fork().

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Complete thread:

mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) - roytam, 23.12.2011, 02:45 (Miscellaneous)
- mksh (ENOMEM, ENOCARE) - Rugxulo, 23.12.2011, 08:10
- mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) - Ibidem, 05.01.2012, 22:33
  - mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) - Rugxulo, 05.01.2012, 23:00
    - mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) - Ibidem, 08.01.2012, 03:37
      - mksh (Rugxulo, please come in!) - Rugxulo, 11.01.2012, 05:47