All PalmOS developers,
I have just released my first public beta of prc-tools-0.6.0. To download it,
anonymous-FTP to ftp.jpsystems.com and download the file
prc-tools.0.6.0beta.tar.gz.
For those of you for whom this announcement is a surprise, here is some
background. All versions of prc-tools from 0.1.0 to 0.5.0 were made by Jeff
Dionne, and the gcc component of these prc-tools was made primarily by Kresten
Krab Thorup, with contributions from Jeff Dionne, Ian Goldberg, and others.
However, all the above people have apparently vanished from the face of the
earth or quit this work, as the last activity on this front was the prc-tools-
0.5.0 release in 1997. I am extremely pleased with prc-tools-0.5.0 and I
absolutely love its way of doing things, and I have been using it since I
started PalmOS development in September 1999 at JP Systems, Inc. In the process
of using it, I have made a ton of improvements to it. This together with the
fact that the original developers have apparently stepped off the stage has
made me believe that I have the right to take over.
Then I learned that John Marshall, originally a free hacker and now a Palm
employee, is also making new PalmOS gcc and prc-tools. We have shared some code
and ideas, but our distributions are still competing. I feel that my
distribution has the right to the version number 0.6.0 and not John Marshall's
because the former is much closer in spirit and goals to Jeff Dionne's
distributions than the latter. I have been religious about keeping the look,
feel, taste, and smell of Jeff Dionne's distributions, while John Marshall's
version is different beyond recognition. As I've said, I'm extremely pleased
with prc-tools-0.5.0 and its way of doing things, but John Marshall denounces
it.
Despite our ideological disagreement, John and I have shared some code and
ideas. In particular, I'm currently using his version of the toolchain with
little change, although the PalmOS gcc programming environment is almost
completely my own. I don't consider my work to be finished yet, which is why I
call it a beta. I'm releasing this early beta so that people can see for
themselves what the two version are like and to draw their own conclusions.
Despite being a beta, this distribution is very complete and usable almost like
a production release. It also includes mounds of documentation. The full
Programmer's Guide to PalmOS gcc is about 115 KB! The only documentation still
missing are the manpages for the new and changed host tools. The full manual
describes PalmOS gcc overall and refers to different features of the tools, but
doesn't go into command line syntax details, assuming that it's in the
manpages, which aren't there yet. However, the tools are all written in C and
have absolutely straightforward command line parsers, so you can figure out the
command line syntax from the source.
Stay tuned for the final release and/or further betas!
--
Michael Sokolov 2695 VILLA CREEK DR STE 240
Software Engineer DALLAS TX 75234-7329 USA
JP Systems, Inc. Phone: +1-972-484-5432 x247
or +1-888-665-2460 x247
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Fax: +1-972-484-4154
--
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