As you might know, there is no Dos
distribution of 2.2.0 release yet.
There are several reasons for this, but
I am started a small branch that tries to
get the minimal changes to get a usable Dos
release.

This branch is on the svn repository under fixes_2_2_0_dos. Using the 2.2.0 release sources to create a
Dos distribution results in a program that does not work at all under raw Dos, mainly because of the fact that
you need to look for '*.*' to get all files under Dos and '*' only lists files without extensions.

The other more subtle problem seems to be related to problems in the IDE while debugging when compiling with optimizations set to -O2.

Another problem was that the install.dat file,
used by the installer, was out of sync with the current sources at release date. As this file is only used for go32v2 and os2 and nobody really tried to generate them, it got unnoticed.

I uploaded to ftp.freepascal.org
under ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2 separate zip files, with install.exe and install.dat files.

The directory shortsep is for people
adventurous enough to try to test the installation of the beta dist onto a system without LFN support. The separate directory is for people who would like to test the beta dist on Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista or on any Dos distribution having LFN or with
a TSR that adds LFN support on your favorite Dos
system.

I would like to get feedback on the stability of the IDE (especially while debugging executables).
If people are willing to help, it would be great to have persons that would try to do a complete rebuilding of the beta dist of their Dos system. Beware that you will need quite a lot of free disk space for that...

I am not really sure that using the sources included in the same directory will work for that purpose, but attempts and failures should be reported on that list.

The first step would be to install the sources,
and try to recompile everything by doing a
'make all OPT="-gl -O- -dDEBUG" UPXPROG=echo'
at source level.
You should basically regenerate the same executable (alltough the will not match completely as the date is written somewhere inside the debugging information, together with absolute pathes to the sources...)

If someone is really willing to try to inspect deeper, doing a second build, removing the -O- option
and check if the IDE generated that way behave
as smoothly as when I tested the IDE compiled with -O-.

By the way, the IDE being compiled with -dDEBUG, should have the ability to switch back and forth between graphic and text mode and thus support debugging for graphic Dos application, provided that you are only using modes defined in the Graph unit.

For all answers, please state in the subject
that you are usng the beta 2.2.0a for Dos,
I am not reading all threads of this mailing list.

Pierre Muller

Pierre Muller wrote

There are several reasons for this, but I am started a small branch that tries to get the minimal changes to get a usable Dos release.

Sounds great! My pre-releases (w/o no-LFN fix) are at <http://www.bttr-software.de/misc/fpc/>.

The other more subtle problem seems to be related to problems in the IDE while debugging when compiling with optimizations set to -O2.

Please explain these problems!

Another problem was that the install.dat file, used by the installer, was out of sync with the current sources at release date. As this file is only used for

I didn't noticed that before albeit I used the installer several times. What was wrong?

I uploaded to ftp.freepascal.org under ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2 separate zip files, with install.exe and install.dat files.

I get "Permission denied". :-(

I would like to get feedback on the stability of the IDE (especially while debugging executables).

IIRC I got "internal error 291" (or 219) every time, when I set a breakpoint in a unit and started the main program.

If people are willing to help, it would be great to have persons that would try to do a complete rebuilding of the beta dist of their Dos system. Beware that you will need quite a lot of free disk space for that...

I could to that.

Robert Riebisch

It seems that the IDE compiled without special OPT setting is not stable when you debug a program, but I did not have time to investigate this.

It is only for some zip files that have a different name in the install.dat files than the name of the file created by 'make go32v2zip' for instance.
It does not affect the required files.

I tried to upload them to test myself
and realized that the change that I made in
the fpcmake was incorrect and led to wrong
zip files (containing the wrong files or with the wrong directory structure).

This is explained in the README at beta/2.2.0a/go32v2 level.

As soon as I get a correct upload, I will
reopen these directories.

Using the IDE with debug info included,
you should be able to get a backtrace in such cases.

Thanks, Robert!

I will send an email when the files are ready.

Pierre

I will send an email when the files are ready.

The beta testing files for Dos 2.2.0a
are downloadable from

ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2

Please report any problems encountered during installation or use of this beta.

Pierre Muller

Content of README file:

This directory will be used to test the
modifications inserted to the 2.2.0 sources
in order to be able to generate a valid
Dos distribution.

The sources are in the svn repository
under the branch fixes_2_2_0_dos.

Due to some instabilities with the dos
executables created with default settings,
this test version was compiled with OPT set to
"-gl -O- -dDEBUG", together with UPXPROG set to
"echo". This leads to the generations of
programs that have debugging information included
(which are of course much bigger in size),
the setting of UPXPROG to "echo" prevents
copression by upx which would otherwise also lead
to the removal of debugging information.

As indicated by the BETA subdirectory, this
is NOT a release, but just a test version,
that will be overwritten in case some problems
are detected and fixed while testing.

Feedback on problems when trying to install
the beta distribution should go to fpc-devel
mailing list.
If you want to try to install this distribution
onto a Dos machine without LFN support, you should try to download the files in shortsep subdirectory. If you want to install the beta distribution
on a system that supports LFN, please use the files in separate subdirectory.

A very helpful test would be to try to completely
rebuild the distribution from the sources provided.

Try to unzip all sources, and launch a
'make build OPT="-gl -O- -dDEBUG'
at source level.

Pierre Muller 2007/10/01

Pierre Free Pascal wrote

Please report any problems encountered during installation or use of this beta.

As nobody else reported anything meanwhile...

Obvious problems first:
1) In <ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2/separate/> files demo.zip, gdbdos.zip, and makedos.zip are missing.

2) In <ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2/shortsep/> files basedos.zip, demo.zip, aslddos.zip, gdbdos.zip, and makedos.zip are missing.

3) I only tested `shortsep' under Windows 2000 (with LFNs). Installation was OK.

4) Building <http://gearhead.roguelikedevelopment.org/gh-1100-src.zip> was a little bit difficult, because IDE returned to DOS prompt *w/o* an error message very often. Running GearHead was difficult too, because it crashed after entering a characters name -> *w/o* any error message. After playing around a got "-gl" to work. But only every three times it showed a dump when crashing. Very strange!

5) I noticed, that examples\gdbint\symify.pp is broken, because it assumes "0x" for hex numbers, where current FPC uses "$". I hacked it a little to make it work finally. I'd like to share my patch with others. Should symify be able to detect both "0x" and "$"?

When I tried to build symify.pp in IDE, I was able to build symify.o only. It just didn't build an EXE file, but didn't show an error. Via command-line compile I found, that there some libs missing.

Robert Riebisch