DOS ain't dead

dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 (Announce)

posted by bencollver , 24.01.2026, 16:36

> > 0.6.21 and 1.0.1 are both OpenWatcom builds.
>
> Why two versions? What's the difference?

1.0.1 has a bunch of changes, some good, and others i don't trust yet. So i am keeping both copies around for now.

For example, 1.0.1 adds "out of memory checks", which are basically:

OLD: ptr = malloc(size);
NEW: ptr = malloc(size);
NEW: if (!ptr) fatalc("Out of memory");

With this change i was unable to build libc because the C preprocessor (cpp.c) sometimes calls malloc(0), which returns NULL in Watcom C. It erroneously dies with an "Out of memory" error. In this case it is harmless and it doesn't actually dereference the NULL pointer. So i changed it to skip the fatal error when the size was 0.

From the bcc(1) man page:

The bcc.c compiler driver source is very untidy.

By the way, this morning i posted a new build with two changes:

1) Fixed a potential infinite loop in bcc

2) I had missed a couple of changes in 1.0.1/src.zip, which are now included in 1.0.1/srcb.zip

Complete thread:

• dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 - bencollver, 23.01.2026, 19:35
  • dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 - Rugxulo, 24.01.2026, 07:34
    • dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 - bencollver, 24.01.2026, 14:23
      • dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 - Rugxulo, 24.01.2026, 16:23
        • dev86 BCC 0.16.21 and 1.0.1 - bencollver, 24.01.2026, 16:36