On Tuesday 13 November 2012 17:55:14 Felix Geyer wrote: > On 12.11.2012 12:19, Frank Mehnert wrote: > > It is correct that we switched from bcc to Open Watcom to compile > > the PC BIOS as well as the VGA BIOS. The reason is indeed that bcc > > is unmaintained since years, has many bugs and creates code which > > is far away from being optimized. And we didn't find an appropriate > > alternative to Open Watcom. > > > > But it is not true that Open Watcom is required to build the BIOS > > of VirtualBox. If Open Watcom is not available, an alternative Assembler > > file can be used to create the BIOS. See here: > > > > https://www.virtualbox.org/browser/vbox/trunk/src/VBox/Devices/BiosCommon > > Code > > Right, but Open Watcom is required to build the BIOS from source > ("preferred form for modification"). > That makes VirtualBox a candidate for the Debian contrib repository as it > is free but requires non-free software to build from source. When the > package is in contrib the assembler file could be used to build the BIOS.
In my opinion this depends on the definition of the term "source code". The VirtualBox source code tarball ships two alternative variants of the BIOS source code: The first variant is C code mixed with Assembler code (in src/VBox/Devices/PC/BIOS/* and src/VBox/Devices/Graphics/BIOS/*). The second variant is pure Assembler code which can be found in src/VBox/Devices/PC/BIOS/VBoxBiosAlternative.asm and src/VBox/Devices/Graphics/BIOS/VBoxVgaBiosAlternative.asm Both variants are part of the source code tarball, and the second variant allows it to build VirtualBox even if Open Watcom is not available. It should not matter that the second variant is generated from the first variant because that generation is done by the VirtualBox team and we ensure that the 2nd variant will produce the same object code as the 1st variant. Kind regards, Frank -- Dr.-Ing. Frank Mehnert | Software Development Director, VirtualBox ORACLE Deutschland B.V. & Co. KG | Werkstr. 24 | 71384 Weinstadt, Germany Hauptverwaltung: Riesstr. 25, D-80992 München Registergericht: Amtsgericht München, HRA 95603 Geschäftsführer: Jürgen Kunz Komplementärin: ORACLE Deutschland Verwaltung B.V. Hertogswetering 163/167, 3543 AS Utrecht, Niederlande Handelsregister der Handelskammer Midden-Niederlande, Nr. 30143697 Geschäftsführer: Alexander van der Ven, Astrid Kepper, Val Maher
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