Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
At 02:27 PM 10/11/2005 -0700, Blair Campbell wrote: bypassed. After three days of on-and-off hacking on it, I built a mutant UPX 1.25 to compress EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.EXE to work both as a device driver and as a stand-alone EXE file. As almost always is the case, the actual changes were small, figuring them out was the hard part. Where is/will this version of UPX be available? Perhaps it could be in the UPX package as a seperate binary exclusively for packing things like HIMEM/EMM386 and TDSK. I could have sworn I answered a post from you on this topic previously. Hmm, yup, I did. Since you are eager for the mutation, I have uploaded a file called mods-upx125-dos.zip in directory ftp.devoresoftware.com/downloads/emm386 which contains the two modified files, p_exe.cpp and l_exe.asm. These changes were used to compress HIMEM and EMM386 with revised UPX 1.25. They have been working properly so far under the new compression scheme. p_exe.cpp was slightly cleaned up and restored original EXE stack settings so as not to upset more delicate constitutions. Only other change was to the UPX makefiles for my own directory setup and tool versions, which obviously would be of no use to anyone else. Naturally, users are solely responsible for the rest of build, including the UCL library. If for some bizarre reason someone wants the UPX mutated binary build I used under Cygwin, I can put that up, but it seems superfluous. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
At 11:25 PM 10/11/2005 +0200, Bernd Blaauw wrote: Markus Oberhumer seems to have his own website and seems quite active. Maybe he's interested in your patch. It's not in a good patch form consistently matching the rest of the source, but rather a basic hack to make things work. Also, it forces the default stack for EXE's, although that could be fixed in a couple of minutes. Doubtful they'd be interested in a patch that wasn't good to insert as-is at the time of submission. Perhaps SY3PACK stub (as your UPX counts as competition) will now become 8086 compatible, or EMM386/HIMEM back to GPL as there are no more issues with the GPL conflicting with a stub from a non-GPL compressor. Tom's explicit choice though, as your significant contributions are mentioned as public domain. GPL is a blight upon the land. Tom's choice of Artistic License 2.0 was an excellent decision, assuming one chooses to open rather than PD source. I like Artistic License sufficiently well that any future open source project I develop which isn't released as public domain will use it. That is, I will unless OSI approves an enticing license which FSF doesn't agree is GPL-compliant, which I will thereby embrace as a raspberry at the FSF . Currently the only OSI-approved licenses FSF says aren't GPL-compliant aren't very attractive to me for development. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
Blair Campbell schreef: minutes. Doubtful they'd be interested in a patch that wasn't good to insert as-is at the time of submission. Can you at least make it available for compressing other things like Turbo disk? here's the patch/hack, get UPX sources from CVS yourself somehow and find a way to compile it including the proper algorythm ? :) I guess the UPX diff-file will end up in a next EMM386 (interim) release someday Tdsk is obsolete, by the way. SRdisk is a nice GPL replacement, and Jason Hood's freeware drivers with source available (SHSURDRV for example) can replace XMSDSK in most cases. Bernd --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
minutes. Doubtful they'd be interested in a patch that wasn't good to insert as-is at the time of submission. Can you at least make it available for compressing other things like Turbo disk? --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
bypassed. After three days of on-and-off hacking on it, I built a mutant UPX 1.25 to compress EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.EXE to work both as a device driver and as a stand-alone EXE file. As almost always is the case, the actual changes were small, figuring them out was the hard part. Where is/will this version of UPX be available? Perhaps it could be in the UPX package as a seperate binary exclusively for packing things like HIMEM/EMM386 and TDSK. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
[Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
At 12:39 AM 10/11/2005 +0200, Bernd Blaauw wrote: Again a nice theoretic discussion :) Anyway, are FreeDOS related programs and drivers also ment to be used on MSDOS or not as partial replacement? The drivers could be used on MS-DOS freely, it is only the control programs which would extend FreeDOS. So nothing would break MS-DOS, MS-DOS just couldn't do everything FreeDOS does. A happy state of affairs for FreeDOS, actually. However, a lot of the associated 386-level griping may now be bypassed. After three days of on-and-off hacking on it, I built a mutant UPX 1.25 to compress EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.EXE to work both as a device driver and as a stand-alone EXE file. As almost always is the case, the actual changes were small, figuring them out was the hard part. Using the custom mutated UPX will eliminate SY3PACK closed-source issues, including the 80186-level requirements for the [de]compressor (I think that's the SY3PACK minimum CPU opcode req). What will make you sad is that SY3PACK compression actually beats UPX by a few hundred bytes on each of HIMEM and EMM386 files, but file growth is what you'll have to live with to keep the masses happy. SY3PACK winning may be due to the UPX rebuildable open source using the less efficient UCL compression library than the optimal UPX build which uses the closed-source NRV big-brother version. I can't do anything about that, either. --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
Re: [Freedos-user] UPX compression, was FreeDOS Post-1.0 todo list
Michael Devore schreef: However, a lot of the associated 386-level griping may now be bypassed. After three days of on-and-off hacking on it, I built a mutant UPX 1.25 to compress EMM386.EXE and HIMEM.EXE to work both as a device driver and as a stand-alone EXE file. As almost always is the case, the actual changes were small, figuring them out was the hard part. congratulations Michael! One more succes-story never hurts :) Markus Oberhumer seems to have his own website and seems quite active. Maybe he's interested in your patch. At least now it makes the memory drivers less dependent on closed source. Using the custom mutated UPX will eliminate SY3PACK closed-source issues, including the 80186-level requirements for the [de]compressor (I think that's the SY3PACK minimum CPU opcode req). Perhaps SY3PACK stub (as your UPX counts as competition) will now become 8086 compatible, or EMM386/HIMEM back to GPL as there are no more issues with the GPL conflicting with a stub from a non-GPL compressor. Tom's explicit choice though, as your significant contributions are mentioned as public domain. What will make you sad is that SY3PACK compression actually beats UPX by a few hundred bytes on each of HIMEM and EMM386 files, but file growth is what you'll have to live with to keep the masses happy. SY3PACK winning may be due to the UPX rebuildable open source using the less efficient UCL compression library than the optimal UPX build which uses the closed-source NRV big-brother version. I can't do anything about that, either. That's a limitation of UPX indeed, and a source of discussion 1 or 2 years ago. As HIMEM is more used than EMM386 on bootdisks, I can only suggest moving the XMS-test from HIMEM to EMM386, as EMM386 is an executable already anyway. That would leave HIMEM as a smaller .SYS driver. Maybe make the exclusion of the exe-part of HIMEM a compile-time option..though somehow I think Tom will come over and kill me before he would even consider allowing that :) Bernd --- This SF.Net email is sponsored by: Power Architecture Resource Center: Free content, downloads, discussions, and more. http://solutions.newsforge.com/ibmarch.tmpl ___ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
