Re: C Compilers

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002 [email protected] wrote:

> http://openwatcom.org/product/features_content.html
>
> The link above indicates that OWC is now DOS hosted.  Is this true?  The
> site only has a link for a Windows Installer binary.  What would be great
> is if the compiler was also self-hosted so someone could compile it for a
> 16-bit DOS target and those binaries would be available.  However, I
> remember that previous versions of the website indicating that
> self-hosting was an issue that was WIP.

self-hosting has been achieved earlier than planned except for VDM
debugging and Win16, essentially.

However 16-bit hosted executables are in general not possible without
major work (wmake is an exception though). The compiler is too big
(700-800k), simply spoken. You would have to remove features to get it to
fit into an XT with 640K RAM.

Compiling the OpenWatcom code generator will give you this error if you
would try it:
#if INT_MAX == SHRT_MAX

    #error Forget it - no more 16-bit hosts - buy a real machine.

#else

Now you can *target* 16-bit just fine. And that is what matters IMHO,
simply cross-compile from Windows, OS/2 or Linux (when it's ported) or use
32-bit DOS (including Linux DOSEMU) to develop.

Bart