GCC is not capable of producing pure 16-bit binaries even with -m16.
On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 11:37 AM, Jim Hall <jh...@freedos.org> wrote:
> > On Thu, 26 Oct 2017, David McMackins wrote:
> >
> >> I have been informed that gcc has a -m16 flag that actually outputs
> >> binaries that can run in 16-bit mode. Is there then anything stopping
> >> FreeDOS from being compiled fully with gcc?
> >>
> >> If not, why are we still using Watcom?
>
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 8:48 AM, Steve Nickolas <usots...@buric.co> wrote:
> > Pretty sure that GCC, if it supports 8088/286 at all, can't handle all
> the
> > memory models (this was, iirc, DJ Delorie's justification for why DJGPP
> > would only do 386+ binaries - think he said it would at best only support
> > the tiny and small models, and some of the FreeDOS tools need other
> memory
> > models.)
>
> It would be interesting to try GCC in 16-bit mode. I wonder if this
> works in the DJGPP version, which is the version of GCC (5.5) that
> runs on DOS.
>
> Steve raises a good point about the memory models. DOS compilers
> (including Watcom) can generate different executable memory models,
> suitable for different sizes of applications. Some FreeDOS programs
> use Tiny memory model, for example.
>
> David: would you like to try compiling some FreeDOS programs under GCC
> using -m16 flag? The Kernel is big project, so starting with some
> utilities would be a good first experiment.
>
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