[Aldor-l] Aldor on MSDOS

[Pippijn van Steenhoven]

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 11:43:57AM -0400, Bill Page wrote:
> It's just a guess, but I am quite sure the answer is "no".
> 
> Seriously, is there any reason to be interested in 16 bit DOS other
> than history? I can not imagine any real application of Aldor on such
> a machine. But of course that these (and worse!) were the kind of
> tools that the original developers had to work with at the time, does
> underscore the admiration that most people feel for the true pioneers
> in any endeavor.
> 
> At this time in 2009, I think bug fixing and some high-level aspects
> of the Aldor language should be the main focus.  I do not see any
> reason to continue to support any build platforms other than recent
> versions of Linux/OSX/BSD, MS Windows and Solaris. Doing this would
> likely mean that the build system and some parts of the "portability
> layer" could be considerably simplified and standardized.
> 
> Regards,
> Bill Page.

Basically, Aldor supports the following platforms: CMS, MSDOS, MacOS X,
Macintosh, OS/2, various UNIX-like systems, VMS, Win32. I am somewhat in
favour of removing CMS, DOS, OS/2 and VMS, unless anyone wants to use it
on those systems. The Macintosh part is tiny, so we can keep that. I am
also in favour of (at least temporarily) removing the garbage collector.
Doing so will make the OS layer much simpler, because most of that layer
is memory management. The garbage collector does not work on VMS,
Macintosh and OS/2, so it wouldn't be a loss on those systems (provided
we want to keep them).

Currently (or soon), I can test the following environments:

  - GCC 4.2.1 on Win32 (mingw)
  - VS9 on Win32 (microsoft)
  - Watcom 1.8 on WinNT, Win95, Win31 (386 enhanced mode)
  - Watcom 1.8 on Linux/i386 (maybe)
  - GCC 4.1.2, 4.1.3 and 4.3.2 on Linux/i386
  - GCC 4.3.2 on Linux/x86_64 (currently not, maybe later)
  - GCC 3.4.2 and 4.2.1 on FreeBSD/i386
  - TinyC on Linux/i386
  - TenDRA on Linux/i386
  - GCC (unknown, I haven't managed to set it up, yet) on RISC
    System/6000 running AIX

I am going to try and get access to some Solaris machines. I revamped the
build system completely, allowing for easy cross compilations. That is
nice.. what is not nice is that the system has become rather convoluted
because of it. I need to give it another look, document it, make it more
aesthetically pleasing, etc.

Bill, do you still have access to the OpenSolaris machines? If so, then
could you test Aldor on that?

Regards,

-- 
Pippijn van Steenhoven
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