Re: Compiling FreeCom

On Mon, 7 Oct 2002, Alain wrote:

> Never mind. It is not worth the trouble (the problem is probably with the
> patches applied to the final binary). IMHO the only worthy effort
> would be to compile it with OpenWatcom because it has no redistribution
> limitation. For now it is quite ok to have a link to Borland's museum, but
> what if they remove it from there? On the other side, some of us (including
> myself) have licenced BC31. Just thinking aloud...

Well SUPPL claims that it can be compiled using Watcom 10.6 so OW should
be no problem for that. FreeCOM requires a little more work -- I'm not
sure how much but it takes more than 15 minutes.

(a quick check reveals that it depends on "sizeof" being known at
preprocessor time, dir.h and _seg * pointers)

As to compilers, yes, OpenWatcom can be redistributed legally but it still
does not satisfy the FreeDOS spec:
"The FreeDOS kernel and all FreeDOS programs (utilities, drivers,
compilers, etc.) should run on all levels of PC hardware. FreeDOS should
operate on processors as low as the 8088 (XT) with as little memory as
640k."

The OpenWatcom compiler that _targets_ the 8088 (wcc.exe) is > 700kb.
Stripping it down to work on an 8088 is quite a bit of work. And probably
not worth it - I don't know anyone here who _develops_ FreeDOS on an 8088
(although several who run it on this museum piece).

Bart