X-Authentication-Warning: delorie.com: mail set sender to djgpp-bounces using -f NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2011 22:14:16 -0600 From: "Charles Sandmann" Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp References: <125997 DOT 8962 DOT qm AT web45113 DOT mail DOT sp1 DOT yahoo DOT com> <83mxm6s2h9 DOT fsf AT gnu DOT org> Subject: DJGPP past and future (was Re: VIRTUAL BOX ...) Date: Wed, 9 Feb 2011 22:14:14 -0600 X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2900.5931 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.5994 X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original Message-ID: <5Y-dnbmCK9yF-87QnZ2dnUVZ_rKdnZ2d@earthlink.com> Lines: 65 X-Usenet-Provider: http://www.giganews.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 64.91.136.221 X-Trace: sv3-GJ4RFPoSZNRZJP1p/zZZMMvxFO6WdktonFXSOodaAdBtS2LlJC62M8Cfa+F9ABqUSBBpj7rnDaEZfe1!rpuBNTIQ1ikn5RD4il9F2uQVTqMXmkHB/HkbcZHlM9ePvDU8tKTwSWjyLM5eGqO3VwjKdA2iQ1JW!NXNkByqStz178IQYzN5NcAS0/M6Dn0Zh X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 4309 X-Original-Bytes: 4248 To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com DJ-Gateway: from newsgroup comp.os.msdos.djgpp Reply-To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com > Only with patchlevel 2 (backported from 2.04?) did 2.03 (circa 2000) > become "stable" on Win2k/XP The refresh was released in December 2001, over 9 years ago, and included fixes for many modules to work around NTVDM bugs in Windows 5. Windows 2000 and Windows XP are very similar and bug compatible (and claim windows versions NT5.0 and NT5.1). I haven't used a DOS or Win 9x OS since January 2000, with the release of Windows 2000. But I still use many DJGPP and personal applications built with DJGPP daily. v2.03 has been my preferred djgpp version since the 2001 update. I also use many apps built with VisualC from VS6 (circa 1997) as native Win32 console apps. But the RTL support is very poor, so requires either hacking source or some support routines to port to the Win32 native environment. I prefer small, fast images, so avoid tools that contain bloat (personal definition: always getting features I don't want or need). So I prefer to use Juan's libsupp with v2.03 when needed to add the required RTL functional requirements for many apps written / enhanced since the 1990s. v2.04 just isn't ready in my opinion for my use - and my djgpp use is now minimal enough to make it not worth while to be the release manager to move it from beta to release. That's been the one and only reason that v2.04 has never been released - no one has wanted it bad enough to be the release manager, create a plan, clear the required bugs, schedule a final release candidate. But new versions of windows (Vista, 7) are less NTVDM compatible. 64-bit versions do not support 16-bit applications (a hardware limitation) - so there is no DOS to load the stub or to handle DOS interrupts. It's clear to me that Win32 console apps are the fix for this problem. Since there are are other compilers that address that area, I might borrow some of the well debugged, tight DJGPP code for RTL improvements, but that's it. I still think djgpp apps are good for embedded systems, close to the metal diagnosis apps, etc. And until I have to deal with 64-bit windows every day ... it's still good enough for the big pile of already built apps. >P.S. The changes in 2.04 were pretty much CWS' work (right??). Not at all. The v2.03 refresh was my idea, and I acted as the release manager on the update. I had several Win 2000 systems used on a daily basis, and the bugs personally bugged me enough to make sure it worked. I helped work on v2.04 until Andrew quit as release manager. > (v2.04...) Better support for 4 GB files, better > memory management (??), symlinks, etc. There are problems with the APIs for files over 2GB; I'm not sure this is fixable (maybe it should be pulled out). free() has a performance bug - which could be fixable by not trying so hard to merge blocks. The alternate malloc() is missing functionality and was not stable last time I saw it tested.