re: Re: Beta vs. Stable

On Sat, 9 Nov 2002, Eric Auer wrote:

> MEM works just fine. We should not aim to be command-switch compatible to
> everything, as long as we offer the same features.

requirement, see:
http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/spec/spec.html

"All FreeDOS programs *must* be 100% compatible with MS-DOS commands
out-of-the-box. Any additional features may be added as extensions, or
using different command line options or config files."

then at:
http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/spec/commands.html

mem
Display the amount of memory installed, and the amount available.

mem [options]


Options:

/PROGRAM | /P
  Display the programs that are loaded in memory.

  /DEBUG | /D
  Prints lots of debugging information.

  /CLASSIFY | /C
  Display the programs that are loaded in memory, and how much
  conventional, expanded, and extended memory each is using.

> What other well-known compatibility exceptions apart from Windows do we
> have? Would be quite interesting to know.

Norton cache 8.0 is one (interrupt divide by zero). Though we have LBA
cache of course :)

> I do not get your "must compile with MASM" point at all. MASM is not part
> of MS DOS, it is just another MS product. As MS DOS never came with sources,
> nobody will try to compile it with MS compliers. Nor will anybody with
> FreeDOS.

it is simply a requirement of the FreeDOS spec. I don't agree, but I
didn't write the spec.

> What kernel interrupts are still missing for MS DOS 5.0 compatibility?
> What are the kernel interrupts that we "should not implement"?
> What MS DOS version belong the kernel interrupts that FreeDOS is still
> missing to?

Download http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/spec/dosints.zip
It's an extract of RBIL, but it's not complete and many things that are
not relevant to the FreeDOS kernel are left in there.

What I mean: a spec is just that, a spec. If we don't want to conform to
our own spec then the spec should be changed.

Bart