On 6/2/2025 16:48, tom ehlert via Freedos-devel wrote: > >> That's good to know. But why not WASM, for consistency? Perhaps NASM >> has more features, stronger support for macros and/or is better >> maintained? Rules for using one over another? (Like pure vs hybrid >> language packages?) > History. NASM is available for free for much longer time then WASM; so > programs > got ported form MASM/TASM to NASM. Now FreeDOS .ASM programs are consistently > compiled > with NASM.
I see. Thanks for explaining. >> Indeed, that's an important distinction. The inherent downside is that >> ASSIGN.EXE, for instance, have been carried over for decades and if >> modification becomes necessary (bug fixes or adding new features) one >> cannot modify and rebuild it with the tools available in the >> distribution right away. > While this is true, there are just 2 possible ways to deal with this: > > a) port it to one of the tools provided, once in the future the need arises > to recompile it > > or > > b) port it to one of the tools provided, just in case in the future someone > might > need to recompile it. > > Unless YOU are bored enough to do (a), IMHO the sensible choice should be > (b). Don't you mean the converse? Anyway, I guess I'm bored enough. Or just look for consistency in everything. :P >>> I'll add that several vendors have since released their compilers for >>> free (gratis, if not open source) and we link to them from the "For >>> developers" page on our website. > > I'll add that at the time FreeDOS was started, *all* compilers and assemblers > were commercial. > The "official" compilers for FreeDOS were MSC and MASM. I think part of what the FreeDOS project set out to do might have involved to find or develop a free compiler and assembler for DOS; like GNU did back in the 80s. > I never considered this a problem. Virtually everyone who was able to modify > programs would > have access to a compiler; even if not this compiler was just a few hundred > bucks away. And > investing a few hundred bugs to start your hoppy isn't considered a problem > anywhere else. Right now a few hundred bucks may be above the minimum wage in a third world country like mine. Back then, for sure, it was multiples of the minimum wage here. > Open source was the possibility to modify existing programs at *any* price. It virtually always gives this possibility, but price isn't the *main* point of Free/Libre and Open Source software anyway. > Even today, compilers may be free, but the computers to run these compilers > (and the resulting > programs) aren't free at all. Companies discard old computers quite often. I got many PCs this way. They might be free. _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list Freedos-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
