DOS ain't dead

release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 (Announce)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 29.08.2015, 07:26

> > The release docs mention that also windows-realmode DOS crosscompiler is
> > also available but I haven't found the needed archive.
>
> Maybe he didn't generate it for the RC1 since it takes 5-7 hours to build
> due to the old way of smartlinking (calling watcom's assembler for every
> function)

I haven't tried that piece (and only minimally otherwise), but presumably this is it:

ftp://gd.tuwien.ac.at/languages/pascal/fpc/beta/3.0.0-rc1/i386-win32/fpc-3.0.0rc1.i8086-msdos.exe

> > In future will be released also DOS32-realmodeDOS crosscompiler what is
> > absolutely cool.

Even though I don't understand their difficulty with doing that already, I've been occasionally using the Win32 snapshot under HX.

> More good news; this week Nikolay reported that the internal linker for
> 16-bit is coming along nicely, and the system is initially watcom-free:
>
> This brings 16-bit compilation on a real dos system closer (though as
> i386-go32v2->i8086-dos crosscompiler)
>
> That work is in the development 3.1.x version though.

I'm basically giving up on my stupid MetaDOS (too tedious). Well, I will finish 0.2 very very soon and release it (once I add a few more direct links to FreeDOS "BASE" and "UTIL"). A month ago I asked for feedback (from a few select dudes) but got no testers. It was initially only pre-published (informally via DropBox) for QEMU-Windows dude to test/bugfix the (then-broken) networking code (which he did fix, thankfully).

I assume it's too kludgy or too minimal. Maybe it's not useful (enough?). Dunno. I also assume someone somewhere will eventually tell me it's too brittle or wastes too much bandwidth. Meh. I honestly don't know, but I still thought it was worth doing.

Anyways ... one of the "tests" I semi-frequently run there is downloading /v31/ ppcross8086.exe snapshot (from mirror). I was originally going to compile fpctris and samegame, but those aren't easy to test non-interactively. (But I kept their .EXEs in %BOOT%:\extras , so don't worry.) So, for lack of a better example, I just used my Befunge-93 interpreter (now more "TP" idiomatic, I hope) and homegrown test suite. Yes, it even works now without NASM, WLIB, or WLINK.

I know that isn't saying much, but there ya go.

Complete thread:

• release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Laaca, 26.08.2015, 20:15 (Announce)
  • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - marcov, 26.08.2015, 21:34
    • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - glennmcc, 27.08.2015, 02:19
    • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 29.08.2015, 07:26
      • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - roytam, 29.08.2015, 13:38
        • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - nickysn, 30.08.2015, 22:55
          • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - roytam, 02.09.2015, 05:40
            • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 02.09.2015, 08:27
      • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - marcov, 29.08.2015, 16:09
        • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - nickysn, 30.08.2015, 19:02
  • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 22.10.2015, 15:19
    • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Laaca, 22.10.2015, 19:35
      • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 05.11.2015, 03:34
        • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 10.11.2015, 20:09
          • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 12.11.2015, 00:23
          • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Laaca, 12.11.2015, 19:45
            • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Laaca, 14.11.2015, 16:58
              • release candidate of Freepascal 3.0 - Rugxulo, 14.11.2015, 21:50
                • GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYONE - Laaca, 19.11.2015, 17:25
                  • GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYONE - Rugxulo, 20.11.2015, 02:38
                  • GOOD NEWS FOR EVERYONE - Rugxulo, 26.11.2015, 06:46