On 2/4/2024 11:32 AM, Jerome Shidel via Freedos-devel wrote:
Hi,
On Feb 4, 2024, at 2:16 PM, Ralf Quint via Freedos-devel
<freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net> wrote:
On 2/4/2024 10:17 AM, Gregory Pietsch via Freedos-devel wrote:
I made recompiling Edlin easy for non-programmers, so that shouldn't be a
problem. You don't have to know a lick of C to recompile it.
Well, part of the problem is that in order to recompile, you need to have the
compiler (toolchain) installed, which isn't necessarily easy for a
non-programmer.
Ralf
I have occasionally compiled edlin to provide an updated version for FreeDOS.
As compile from source goes, EDLIN is not that bad. If I recall correctly, It
just needs our Watcom-C to compile. Plus a little knowledge on options and such
things.
In general, it is extremely cumbersome to acquire all the exact required pieces
to accomplish. An fairly often after spending a few hours on trying to get a
successful compile, I will end up giving up. Therefore, I do that very rarely
anymore for almost anything.
The problem with the whole NLS/i18n thing is that it is not only done
with just translating some text extruded from the sources. And
recompiling some programs which don't lend themselves well to the whole
"kitten" shebang. It would require a lot of testing, which needs to be
done by someone with those native language skills (plus some technical
knowledge what it is all about). A lot of command line tools might be
fairly easy to do, but for anything that is using a more formatted
screen output, this also requires to check where things are
"overflowing" (for lack of a better term right now)/misalignment...
And we have a very limited number of people that would have ALL the
required skills.
IMHO, before getting too much wound up with everything that is involved,
I think we need to make sure to have a proper English version, for
everything,
As discussed in the online meeting, it would be nice to include dependency
requirements in the package metadata. This makes me think we could possibly
include the build-dependency requirements as well. Plus a per package universal
build batch. That would be a lot of work and probably require frequent updating
when packages change.
I see that there would be some effort initially to add that info, but
seriously, how much are dependencies as such changing for any given
program after that?
But on the other hand, it would be very nice if all programs (excluding those
made with commercial compilers like Turbo Pascal) could be built from source
simply by installing the required build packages.
This leads me to think, maybe we should go back to the old days when sources
were in their own separate package and not included in the binaries package.
That was a move that I have never understood in the first place, as the
vast majority of people downloading FreeDOS are likely just interested
in getting it running, rather than doing any development. Specially if
things aren't as simple anymore as they (mostly) used to be in the days
of DOS, too many Linuxisms have crept in, which makes it so much harder
for people that are just trying to get back into DOS and haven't done
anything programming wise for the last 20-30 years, and then in things
like BASIC or Turbo Pascal, which are all "programma non grata" for a
lot of OSS license minded folks...
Ralf
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