Hi guys, On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:19 PM, <userbeit...@abwesend.de> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 1:16 AM, Mateusz Viste <mateusz@viste- family.net wrote: >> >> Another question: how are you storing your files on your >> FreeDOS systems? As far as I'm concerned, I usually store >> games in a separate directory, and other stuff under a >> 'programs' directory. But maybe other categories would be >> needed? (like 'devel', 'emulator', etc...?)
I'm not really using a stock FreeDOS install. In fact, I'm sure I ever did. It was always piecemeal with me, done by hand. So I don't stick to the "normal" FreeDOS layout. I don't even have all of "BASE" installed, mostly because I don't seem to need it. I just grab what I need and lump it somewhere. I'm not saying it's the best way, obviously, but trying to organize everything is difficult and error-prone. > Why use a Unix-like structure? > > In DOS, everything is where you want to put it. > Configuration files traditionally reside in the same directory > where the actual program that uses it is located. If not, it > has its own structure (like complex programs, games). I'm no *nix expert, but I don't think argv[0] is reliable across OSes. You can't always tell the full path of the program running due to various reasons, esp. under *nix. So they tend to (apparently) put everything in $HOME (aka, ~/) either in a "hidden" .blahcfg file or .blahdir or some such. Some DOS programs use %HOME% too, sometimes optionally, sometimes only if %BLAHHOME% isn't found. But yeah, ideally, all .EXEs files would look for config files in same dir as they are (ahem, FD EDIT, see my crappy patch). > The problem is, that there are a lot of small DOS programs, > that don’t need their own directory. For those, I suggest a > “miscellaneous” section that I would name %APPSDIR%\BIN. I lump all my random stuff (that has no where else to go) that should be universally available into C:\UTILS (current 272 files). > ==> Thus, a small (non-FreeDOS distribution) program, like > TDE (Thomson Davis Editor: TDE.EXE, older version that ran > with TDE.CFG and nothing else) would be in C:\APPS\BIN. I used to use that one but upgraded years ago to Jason Hood's 5.x version, which switched to text (not binary) config for easier management (plus syntax highlighting, regex replace, etc). On DOS, it searched for TDE.SHL and TDE.CFG, both text files, in various places (%HOME% ?? can't remember), usually found in same dir as TDEP.EXE (which I renamed T.EXE for speedy access). Under Linux, "tde" looks under $HOME, i.e. "~/.tdeshl" and "~/.tdecfg". > I would set this to DEVDIR=%DEVDRV, because this would > get me Borland Pascal into C:\PASCAL, which I appreciate > very much. But then, Pascal was the _only_ programming > language I every /played/ with. But, you get the point. When testing various compilers, I ended up having too many, so it cluttered up my root drive. I ended up moving everything (with a few config tweaks, etc.) into two main dirs, C:\C (for ANSI C stuffs) and C:\W (Wirth, aka Pascal-y). If you're more sentimental, you could perhaps name them C:\RITCHIE and C:\WIRTH directly, but I didn't. A quick count shows 17 subdirs in C:\C and 10 in C:\W (with probably more to come). Some of that is older versions installed too, for comparison, but it's nice to have everything (mostly) in one place. > Some optional system stuff, like DOS4GW and the-like, I’d > put into $DOSDIR directly. Sometimes it's useful to test other compatible extenders at random, so I usually remove all local copies and just put a single copy in C:\UTILS. In other words, I make sure there aren't erroneously old versions lying around that are being used "behind my back". So I only have one CWSDPMI.EXE (r7) in C:\UTILS and not older ones in a billion other places. Similarly for DOS4GW, though OpenWatcom I usually leave (mostly) intact because it uses some oddball versions (e.g. DOS/32A, Causeway). What else did I forget? Oh yeah, you probably can't install DJGPP proper (GCC) into C:\DEV as it uses /dev/c/somedir and /dev/env/PATH etc. for special purposes. Not sure if only DJGPP-compiled stuff would choke on that, doubt it, at least not as badly as the compiler itself. Otherwise, my layout is fairly boring. C:\ZIPS (and a bunch of subdirs, e.g. GFX, SOUND, INET, PROGLANG, OTHEROS, LFN, SHELL, EDIT, I18N, CDROM, DOCUTIL) tries to organize things, esp. for reinstalling or temporary installs of things I don't need all the time or just older versions for regression testing or random source code or whatever. C:\FDOS has some official FreeDOS stuff, but it's all in there directly, not in C:\FDOS\BIN or \NLS or whatever. Random projects I'm working on (or plan to) are in C:\WIP. C:\HX gets its own dir tree. C:\DOCS is random stuff (and even .PDFs, which I hate). C:\TEMP (formerly C:\TMP) is used for random holding place for things to keep my attention (though at least one *nix port assumes the later always exists. BTW, my normal "real" %TEMP% dir is a RAM disk.). I'm really not much of a gamer, but I did lump a few games under C:\GAMES (WOLF3D, PAKU, DCSS060, GALCON, JETPAK15, BMENACE, ACARNAGE, BOBOLI, HEXEN2, LLAMA, KLAB). A few other things randomly get their own main dir, e.g. C:\4DOS and C:\NDN. Oops, almost forgot to mention, C:\EXTRAS is where I put my "updated" or "patched" versions of some FreeDOS things, e.g. my patched EDIT (.CFG fix) or the patched KEYB (tom's UMB fix). This comes in my %PATH% before C:\FDOS (aka, %DOSDIR%), so I can put a temporary patched version there and use it while still keeping older "official" build in C:\FDOS. It's really quite random, still has some old i18n stuff from when I was testing my silly one-floppy i18n disk (Greek [no habla], Esperanto), and it has a very few .EO NLS files that I don't really need, for laughs. I also seemed to have installed HELPPC into a subdir there, weird. Nothing else majorly worth mentioning as I don't honestly expect this to be a good example worth mimicking! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How fast is your code? 3 out of 4 devs don\\\'t know how their code performs in production. 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