X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to djgpp-bounces using -f From: Rugxulo Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp Subject: Re: incompatible Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 16:38:41 -0700 (PDT) Organization: http://groups.google.com Lines: 65 Message-ID: <026d3524-1b2f-405b-987c-db3a7dcf7dbe@n42g2000yqm.googlegroups.com> References: <442a0 DOT 580acc3b DOT 3ce7635b AT aol DOT com> <83txzdstc1 DOT fsf AT gnu DOT org> <8c35d644-ede1-4b87-8c60-ebf6a0db0513 AT hq4g2000vbb DOT googlegroups DOT com>

<201205191813 DOT q4JIDulU002792 AT delorie DOT com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.13.115.246 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1337470721 3459 127.0.0.1 (19 May 2012 23:38:41 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse AT google DOT com NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 19 May 2012 23:38:41 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse AT google DOT com Injection-Info: n42g2000yqm.googlegroups.com; posting-host=65.13.115.246; posting-account=p5rsXQoAAAB8KPnVlgg9E_vlm2dvVhfO User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/10.0.630.0 Safari/534.16,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 4043 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by delorie.com id q4JNj29A011695 Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com Hi, :-) On May 19, 1:13 pm, DJ Delorie wrote: > > I was glossing over it ... DJGPP needs a purpose. > > To me, DJGPP was never the goal. DJGPP existed to *fulfill* a > purpose, not *as* a purpose. Yeah, you wanted to write a 32-bit OS, right? > Originally, it was the only way to make > 32-bit DOS programs *at all*. I'm sure other DOS extenders existed, but of course DJGPP was probably the first free one. > Then it was the only 32-bit Windows way. You mean 32-bit apps under 16-bit Win 3.x? > Then it was a way to get direct hardware access. That's one of DOS' "features", but it's not necessarily popular. Though DJGPP made that better with its rock-hard stability. > These days, MinGW and Linux cover most of the purposes DJGPP was > originally created for - free software, high quality code, 32- and > 64-bit environments, etc. Not really, MinGW only (properly) runs under Windows. Linux binaries only (properly) run under Linux. Workarounds exist (WINE or *BSD's Linuxemu), but they're not meant to be portable binaries. It's kinda a shame. If Java wasn't such a bloated pain (with obvious bad mojo), perhaps something similar would be more universal. Perhaps we really need a better VM (though it seems there are dozens but none totally stable, easy, popular, etc). If anything, you could almost call DOS emulation such a VM. So I don't see how we're any worse than Java people (though I know that may be stretching it a bit). > DJGPP still serves some needs, like direct hardware access and DOS > boot disks, but let's not make more work for outselves when others > have already done it. We know you're always busy. Same with CWS. We're lucky it's still updated at all (thanks Juan, Andris, Eli!). It's just not necessarily the end of the road. There's still plenty more that could be done. But I guess talk is cheap, so if someone (like me) wants to do something, he better roll up his sleeves and get to it, show the code, submit patches, etc. (Easier said than done.) Oops, almost forgot: "but let's not make more work for outselves when others have already done it" ... sorry, but Linux has 300+ distros! How many *BSDs are there? Was Clang or PCC or TCC necessary? How many GUI toolkits are there? Different kinds of Unicode? C-based languages supported? Sorry, DJ, but apparently the world disagrees with you: the more the merrier. ;-) P.S. Though seriously, I think building DOSEMU atop minimal Ttylinux wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? One of these days I'll have to try .... http://ttylinux.net/