On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 2:53 PM, Rugxulo <rugx...@gmail.com> wrote: [SNIP] > On Thu, Jul 27, 2017 at 9:20 AM, Paolo Vincenzo Olivo <pv...@outlook.it> > wrote: [SNIP] >> Anyway, as clearly stated on FreeDOS home page, the purposes for ever >> installing it are in fact >> legacy softwares, dos-games, and embedded systems. I'm sure this comes from >> some sort of >> survey carried out among FreeDOS users. In light of that, I bet as well that >> the idea of making >> a "modern version" of a MS-DOS\Dr-DOS\CP/M-86 like system (maybe 32 bit, >> multitasking, >> real-mode, with modern software compatibility), was dropped after having >> seen what people >> really needed, which was a true old-school dos, running on newer hardware, >> being able to be >> burnt on a USB flash-drive and to be installed even without a floppy disk. > > There are not enough active developers to make such big changes. > Multitasking might be nice, but in light of things like DOSEMU, it's > unnecessary. Also, 32-bit isn't necessary in light of things like > (CWS)DPMI. Now, that doesn't mean the kernel couldn't (somehow) be > massaged to build with GCC (as 386+ real-mode), but it "probably" > wouldn't gain much in speed. The only reason to do that would be to > remove the dependency on OpenWatcom (which is disliked in the Linux > and GNU communities). [SNIP]
It's more possible than ever [0] to compile the kernel with GCC. Skeeto/Chris Wells posted [1][2] an example of compiling 16-bit code with djgpp/GCC, including a linker script for linking 386+ real mode code into a 64KB COM. Chris may have used a pre-4.9.x gcc [3] and/or pre-binutils-2.18 [4]. It now appears gas is also able to speak i8086, i186, i286 and can even generate correct, pure 16-bit mode instructions (no i386 opcode prefixes) [5] if given the correct directives (which appears to be `.code16gcc` in gas and the argument `-m16` to gcc). Yes, it would be a large under taking but maybe a long term worthwhile goal as OW has seem to lost a bit of steam. [0] http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/16bit/ [1] http://nullprogram.com/blog/2014/12/09/ [2] https://github.com/skeeto/dosdefender-ld31 [3] https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc-4.9.4/gcc/i386-and-x86-64-Options.html#i386-and-x86-64-Options [4] https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs-2.18/as/i386_002dOptions.html#i386_002dOptions [5] https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs-2.18/as/i386_002d16bit.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the vibrant tech community on one of the world's most engaging tech sites, Slashdot.org! http://sdm.link/slashdot _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
