Date: 12 Dec 1992 15:23:58 +1100
From: Bill Metzenthen <APM233M AT vaxc DOT cc DOT monash DOT edu DOT au>
Subject: Re: gdb for DOS??
To: djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu


_Mark_ (eichin AT ok DOT cygnus DOT com) writes:

> ps. Someone suggested to me that it wouldn't be hard to provide
> emulation of go32+dos under linux - it is already a 386-aout system,
> it is just a matter of emulating the "int xxh" calls, if you ignore
> the graphics handling (which is reasonable for text apps...) It
> sounded interesting, but I haven't thought further on it.

Perhaps it should be stressed again that it *is* possible to compile
and debug at least some djgpp programs under Linux - the gcc is
(essentially) the same and there is a working version of gdb (although
I have not used it). Once a program is debugged the object modules [or
source files] can be simply copied across to a DOS directory and then
when DOS has been booted the modules can be [re-compiled and] linked
with the djgpp libraries.

I tried this with two programs: the canonical "hello, world" worked
with no problems; a more complex program of 5000 lines of C spread
over 8 source files worked without re-compilation after I linked
a function fileno() to the program under djgpp [fileno() is a macro
under djgpp 1.08, but a function under the current Linux].

The obvious limitation is that you won't tackle bugs in the djgpp
libraries and go32 under Linux.

For those who don't yet know, Linux is a free unix o/s. There is also
386BSD, the other free unix o/s, but I don't know how well DOS
directories are supported under this alternative.


--Bill