Discussion:
DOS extenders
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T. Ment
2019-10-15 17:21:49 UTC
Permalink
Learning more about DOS extenders took me first to Watcom, and then to
Digital Mars. Open Watcom seems dead, but Walter Bright and Digital Mars
C++ and D are still active.

Walter began with Datalight C. It became Zorland, then Zortech, then
Symantec, and finally Digital Mars. Recently (2017) Symantec gave
permission to relicense the D backend with Boost, so now D is fully
open.

Symantec (Zortech C++) is mentioned by Al Williams in his book on DOS
protected mode programming. The history is interesting. Seems there's a
lot to learn.
Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
2019-10-15 20:12:31 UTC
Permalink
Post by T. Ment
Learning more about DOS extenders took me first to Watcom, and then to
Digital Mars. Open Watcom seems dead, but Walter Bright and Digital Mars
C++ and D are still active.
The action is happening in the OpenWatcom 2 fork on Github. That
project seems quite active.

https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2

Or do you mean in terms of DOS extender development?
Post by T. Ment
Walter began with Datalight C. It became Zorland, then Zortech, then
Symantec, and finally Digital Mars. Recently (2017) Symantec gave
permission to relicense the D backend with Boost, so now D is fully
open.
And so is the C/C++ compiler, apparently.

https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc

Though it doesn't seem to be actively developed on Github.
Post by T. Ment
Symantec (Zortech C++) is mentioned by Al Williams in his book on DOS
protected mode programming. The history is interesting. Seems there's a
lot to learn.
Interesting, I didn't know about that book. I might get it if it ships
to my location. Is it worthwhile to get in this day and age?
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | twitter: @myrkraverk
T. Ment
2019-10-15 21:28:20 UTC
Permalink
Post by Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
Post by T. Ment
Open Watcom seems dead
The action is happening in the OpenWatcom 2 fork on Github. That
project seems quite active.
https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2
Or do you mean in terms of DOS extender development?
Do they care about 16-bit DOS, or DOSX development? I doubt it. But
surprise me if I'm wrong.
Post by Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
Post by T. Ment
Walter began with Datalight C. It became Zorland, then Zortech, then
Symantec, and finally Digital Mars. Recently (2017) Symantec gave
permission to relicense the D backend with Boost, so now D is fully
open.
And so is the C/C++ compiler, apparently.
https://github.com/DigitalMars/dmc
Though it doesn't seem to be actively developed on Github.
That community is focused on D. Walter says he still maintains the C++
compiler though, and is converting its source code to D. Maybe he is the
only one working on that, and doing it offline. That's what I gathered
from archived posts and some of his talks on Youtube.
Post by Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
Post by T. Ment
Symantec (Zortech C++) is mentioned by Al Williams in his book on DOS
protected mode programming. The history is interesting. Seems there's a
lot to learn.
Interesting, I didn't know about that book. I might get it if it ships
to my location. Is it worthwhile to get in this day and age?
Depends on your interest in DOS extenders. If you only care about one,
Causeway, maybe not. I like to know what else is out there. Maybe I'll
never get anything done, but what difference does that make? The days of
DOS extenders are long gone. Only historians care now.
Rod Pemberton
2019-10-21 05:21:35 UTC
Permalink
On Tue, 15 Oct 2019 21:28:20 +0000
Post by T. Ment
Post by Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
Post by T. Ment
Open Watcom seems dead
The action is happening in the OpenWatcom 2 fork on Github. That
project seems quite active.
Or do you mean in terms of DOS extender development?
Do they care about 16-bit DOS, or DOSX development? I doubt it. But
surprise me if I'm wrong.
Back around v1.03 of OW, they were talking about eliminating DOS
functionality on their newsgroups, because they didn't have anyone to
support it. So, I've not looked at OW in some years. I.e., v1.03 is
probably last version I'll use, then probably abandon it as I only need
GCC for Linux and DJGPP code ... or maybe not, as supposedly OW was
going to support Linux. That would be a benefit to this aging computer
as OW produced much faster code than GCC. Well, it did for 32-bit, not
sure about 64-bit. Anyway, I'm not sure how far forward they carried
DOS support. Does anyone know? v1.07? v1.09?


Rod Pemberton
--
The U.S. government can't allow a government employee to anonymously
attack the President of the U.S.
Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
2019-10-21 06:29:21 UTC
Permalink
Post by Rod Pemberton
Back around v1.03 of OW, they were talking about eliminating DOS
functionality on their newsgroups, because they didn't have anyone to
support it. So, I've not looked at OW in some years. I.e., v1.03 is
probably last version I'll use, then probably abandon it as I only need
GCC for Linux and DJGPP code ... or maybe not, as supposedly OW was
going to support Linux. That would be a benefit to this aging computer
as OW produced much faster code than GCC. Well, it did for 32-bit, not
sure about 64-bit. Anyway, I'm not sure how far forward they carried
DOS support. Does anyone know? v1.07? v1.09?
I've compiled for DOS with OpenWatcom 1.9 and am now using a snapshot of
2.x for it.

I don't know if I will contribute to OW 2, or the 1.x branch, but I can
to keep DOS support alive.

The 2.x people do build a DOS installer for the compilers though it
doesn't work without an installed 1.9 already. Something to do with how
they bundle DOS4GW.

The Linux support for OW is 32bit only so far, but works. You can give
it a try.
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | twitter: @myrkraverk
r***@gmail.com
2019-10-22 05:55:59 UTC
Permalink
Hi,
Post by Rod Pemberton
Back around v1.03 of OW, they were talking about eliminating
DOS functionality on their newsgroups, because they didn't
have anyone to support it. So, I've not looked at OW in some years.
I don't honestly know all the details, but 1.9 works fine in DOS.
I do think it's had a lot of bugfixes since 1.3, so I don't stick
to older versions at all. (Not that I use it much anyways.)
DJGPP is still better in many ways.

* http://web.archive.org/web/20121027204503/http://openwatcom.org/index.php/C_Compilers_Release_Changes

FYI, the last commercial release was 11.0, so internally, it's
referred to as 12.90 (aka, 1.9).

I'll admit that they (regretfully) took on too many tasks and
haven't released anything since then (2010). But it's still
good, so we're lucky to have it.
Post by Rod Pemberton
That would be a benefit to this aging computer as OW produced
much faster code than GCC. Well, it did for 32-bit, not sure
about 64-bit.
AFAIK, it's slower output than GCC but still decent. The main
draw for DOS is the 16-bit target support. Until "IA-16 GCC"
stabilizes and gets *full* support for building the FreeDOS
kernel and shell, it's not going to replace OpenWatcom at all.
(Even work has barely started on medium model, so all
you've got now is Tiny and Small. Far from exhaustive ...
but better than nothing!) Even Free Pascal's i8086-msdos
cross-compiler supports all models (but Huge is still only
in "trunk").

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