Hi, On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 10:54 AM, Jerome E. Shidel Jr. <[email protected]> wrote: > > Well, I was messing around a little with the new FreePascal Compiler for DOS. > > Basically, what ships requires DOS LFN support. Many units, libraries and > executables > are longer than the 8.3 standard file names. > > It would be a lot of tedious work to migrate it to completely support 8.3 > names. > > I don’t know if the effort is worth it or not. I know I don’t have the time > to do it. > > So basically, unless someone else ports it’s file names that leaves three > options. > > 1) stick with the current version. > 2) leave it alone and require DOSLFN. > 3) Strip it way way way down. > > I will let some else decide how they would like to handle this. :-)
I was the one who made the previous (2.6.0) "package" of FPC. It was a replacement for something much older, which I don't recall exactly what version (2.0.4 ??). But an upgrade was much more useful back then. (I don't remember exactly, but I probably just assumed LFNs and blindly hoped that most things would work either way.) Not too much has changed since then. At least, nothing earth-shattering. Indeed I've thought about making a newer "package", but as you mention, it's not totally obvious. Indeed, the biggest problems are LFNs and including full sources (which presumably means also GDB, which is included in the IDE, which isn't small, which is annoying since it doesn't host compile on target either, so it's of little practical use outside of banal compliance). There has been no GO32v2 (DOS) maintainer of FPC in many years. So what little we get is charity from other dudes (mostly Pierre and Tomas, AFAIK). While MarcoV is also around, he is not very enthusiastic nor sympathetic to DOS at all (anymore). It is certainly beyond someone like me to volunteer since I have no idea what they would even want help with. Certainly I'm no expert. So I never subbed to fpc-devel (or others) due to too much on my plate already. So I'm pretty much out of the loop entirely. The minimal "base" of FPC should be SFN-friendly, by design, AFAIK. But it may not be checked as much in recent years. 3.0.0 is nothing hugely revolutionary, but it does have an internal linker now. I'm not sure when/if the old GNU BinUtils (from DJGPP) are still needed, maybe only to recompile the RTL?? Forget all the extra units of everything and the kitchen sink. Some of them might be useful, but most of them are better left out of any "package". FPC is just too big to vet thousands of files, and certain there is no "one size fits all" (unless you try to include literally everything, which as mentioned, isn't necessarily feasible). IMHO, the bare minimum would be something equivalent to TP 5.5 (system: crt, dos, graph). Or maybe whatever is needed to rebuild the compiler and/or IDE (but dunno what that quite is). Of course, any GNU BinUtils have to be backed up by (huge) sources. But then again, I'm sure most people would insist on having an IDE (which has compiler and GDB built-in), which is even more source dependencies. Do we really want a 50 MB "package" .ZIP?? BTW, the installer has a small bug where it sees that some (compressed) files inside pre-install .ZIPs have LFNs (e.g. "readme-jvm.txt") and doesn't "check" that installer setup box ([ ] basedos.zip !!) for installation only because of that. You will have to "zip -d basedos.zip *readme-jvm.txt" first, or just manually check it and let it try to (force) install anyways. Presumably some of the extra units (of which I have no idea which would be most useful, probably should ask Laaca) also require similar tricks. Sorry if this isn't totally helpful (yet). I just don't quite know how to sort it all out. (Similar concerns with other similarly DJGPP-based packages, e.g. FBC or GCC/G++.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Site24x7 APM Insight: Get Deep Visibility into Application Performance APM + Mobile APM + RUM: Monitor 3 App instances at just $35/Month Monitor end-to-end web transactions and take corrective actions now Troubleshoot faster and improve end-user experience. Signup Now! http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=267308311&iu=/4140 _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
