Message-Id: <m10RcbQ-000S6zC@inti.gov.ar>
Comments: Authenticated sender is <salvador AT natacha DOT inti DOT gov DOT ar>
From: "Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET)" <salvador AT inti DOT gov DOT ar>
Organization: INTI
To: DJ Delorie <dj AT delorie DOT com>, djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 11:14:09 +0000
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Subject: Re: DJGPP: the future is... ?
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Here are my wishes:

1) An install tool. Text mode and friendly (with menues and windows). It 
should incorporate the Zip picker, some notes from the FAQ and DJVERIFY.

2) A Free DOS, cooperating with the FreeDOS project or just doing one. That's 
really important. Specially with M$ trying to kill DOS. We need a DOS with 
sources.

3) Dynamic linking support. That isn't high priority but is interesting. 
Additionally could save some memory in situations like it: RHIDE calls gcc 
and it calls cc1plus. Here 3 copies of a lot of libc functions are loaded in 
RAM. It could reduce the size of the files on disk too. Drawback: it makes 
the programs slower. I debuged inside the Linux dll support code (to find a 
bug in my port of TVision to Linux, it was a bug in gcc 2.7.2.3) and isn't a 
very complex stuff to do.

4) Threads support. I know we can't switch when we are in the OS, but if 
point (2) is done we can have an special DOS with less PM<->RM switchs and 
less latency in the "non switchable" region. After all you can't switch a 
task when Linux is executing the kernel.

5) Network support. We really need it, currently the ports of CVS and many 
tools (Perl!) lacks network support and that's a very bad thing.

I think all of this will make djgpp stronger and remain in your current 
field. I disagree with people wanting to incorporate Windows support, let it 
for add-ons like RSX, at most help to integrate RSX easier, not more. Also: I 
think we need a good GUI, for sure, but that's a project outside djgpp's 
core. Porting XFree86 is an interesting thing, but I doubt that's what we 
need as GUI, XFree isn't fast, is very complicated, is huge, etc. We need a 
GUI that supports messages/events and windowing that's all. Having it we can 
help to V and other cross platform libraries to support a target: 
DOS/djgpp/GUI.

SET

P.S. Of course Eli is right about supporting the last spec, but I think that 
is something that the project currently have as objetive.
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Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET). (Electronics Engineer)
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