Hi Juan, all, Thanks for your reply! Replies below: On Sat, Jun 17, 2017 at 4:27 AM, Juan Perez-Sanchez <lithoxs@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> - Section 3.3 says "Far pointers currently do not work, so accessing >> memory outside the program's 64kB segment requires the use of assembly >> (either inline or a separate file that is assembled and then linked >> into the program).", so it's not going to let you make bigger >> executables even if ELKS added such support. For what it's worth >> you'd find far pointer support in OpenWatcom. >> > > Switching to another compiler would require rewriting large portions > of the current code base. I think I saw some posts earlier where someone had compiled something in ELKS with OpenWatcom and as a result contributed some ANSI C-related fixes. Perhaps it was just the kernel though? > And there are the requirements for the compiler to be open source with > an acceptable license. > Someone at this list mentioned in the past an objection to the license > of OpenWatcom. > Assuming that OpenWatcom fulfills the developer's requirements, what > is needed is a the complete certainty that its licence is acceptable. I wasn't aware of this concern. I'm not a lawyer, but I believe that I see what you are talking about. I'm not clear on the differences between some of the clauses, but in https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2/blob/master/license.txt I see: "2.2 You may use, reproduce, display, perform, modify and Deploy Covered Code, provided that in each instance: ... (c) You must make Source Code of all Your Deployed Modifications publicly available under the terms of this License, including the license grants set forth in Section 3 below, for as long as you Deploy the Covered Code or twelve (12) months from the date of initial Deployment, whichever is longer. You should preferably distribute the Source Code of Your Deployed Modifications electronically (e.g. download from a web site);" To take it to the extreme, I think that by some definitions the source would be "publicly available" if it was in the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet in a toilet stall with a sign on the door saying "Beware of the leopard" (apologies to Douglas Adams if I got that wrong). I have heard that some companies using open source software will state that the source is available on request for a "reasonable charge" and then consider that it is going to take some engineers many hours to assemble the sources, so it may cost hundreds of dollars or more. What I'm trying to get at is that there may be "workarounds" that make it possible to comply with the license that will most likely not require much effort except in the unlikely event that someone requests the source code, and for the cases that I gather people are concerned about - internal/private use - one would expect that the source code would not be requested. Perhaps if it was seen as particularly beneficial to use OpenWatcom (probably not so likely now that gcc-ia16 is available) then this could be looked at further. By the way, I found some more interesting information about this new GCC: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/62sqe6/gcc_for_8088808680286_cpus/ - appears to be from the author (see also the GCC mailing list posts) and discusses some future plans, such as support for other memory models. That points to https://github.com/crtc-demos/build-ia16 (saying "there are some differences between those and the ones used for the Mentor toolchains"); https://github.com/crtc-demos/gcc-ia16 seems to have GCC 6.3 and 7.1 branches too. Also it sounds like the author was involved in the 8088 MPH demo, so he's certainly very much into old PCs! Thanks! David -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
