DOS ain't dead

Hi,

is there a way to tell OW not to display these messages on every run:
Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.

No, '-s silent mode' is not the solution.

Maybe some env var?

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Forum admin

Hi Robert,
Recently I've been using -q on the openwatcom -2.x daily build found on github and it definitely works to quieten when cross compiling for DOS on linux. I seem to remember that it wasn't so effective (but the option was still accepted) on the native DOS version. However I don't update my DOS build environment very often, so perhaps it is a recent addition and my copy predates it.


Andrew

> is there a way to tell OW not to display these messages on every run:
> Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
> Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
> See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.
>
> No, '-s silent mode' is not the solution.

/q

> > is there a way to tell OW not to display these messages on every run:
> > Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
> > Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> > Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
> > See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.
>
> /q

In older versions (e.g. 1.3), it was /zq , but newest supports /q. (You can set environment variables WCL or WCC etc.) However, for Wmake you probably mean /h to avoid the pointless header of info. There's also "set DOS4G=quiet" for other things (but that changed in later versions after DOS4GW.EXE 1.97 anyways).

> > is there a way to tell OW not to display these messages on every run:
> > Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
> > Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> > Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
> > See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.
> >
> > No, '-s silent mode' is not the solution.
>
> /q

Which you have tried before posting, of course?

wmake -q
Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.
Error(E02): Make execution terminated

Notice, I'm talking about WMAKE. /q means query mode. Yes, it supports /s for silent mode, but this is different than just omitting to display the legal mumbo jumbo.

Thanks anyway.

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Forum admin

> In older versions (e.g. 1.3), it was /zq , but newest supports /q. (You can
> set environment variables WCL or WCC etc.) However, for Wmake you probably
> mean /h to avoid the pointless header of info. There's also "set

Yes, exactly /h is the solution for WMAKE! Thanks!

WMAKE doesn't seem to support a WMAKE env var.

> DOS4G=quiet" for other things (but that changed in later versions after
> DOS4GW.EXE 1.97 anyways).

I know.

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Forum admin

> > > is there a way to tell OW not to display these messages on every run:
> > > Open Watcom Make Version 1.9
> > > Portions Copyright (c) 1988-2002 Sybase, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
> > > Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License.
> > > See http://www.openwatcom.org/ for details.
> > >
> > > No, '-s silent mode' is not the solution.
> >
> > /q
>
> Which you have tried before posting, of course?

Except, with wcl386, not wmake, sorry.

This might be stating the obvious, but as a last-ditch solution, if you can't minimize text display with a command-line switch or a DOS Environment variable, you might be able to manually hack the text out using a hex/binary editor. (Of course, this makes the changes permanent.)

Search for the "offending" text string, and if it's an ASCII-Z string (ending with ASCII code 0), you can overwrite the string with ASCII zeroes. If it's a DOS string (ending with ASCII code 24h, the $ character), you can overwrite the string with ASCII code 24h. However, sometimes there's a catch: If the LF+CR line terminators (ASCII ODh+0Ah) are displayed by a separate subroutine (i.e., not embedded in the text string itself), there's probably nothing you can easily do to eliminate line feeds, but at least the annoying text will be gone. (Replaced by annoying blank lines!)

If the binary file has been compressed, it must of course be de-compressed before you edit it. You might want to first test that the de-compressed binary will still run -- sometimes programs do a checksum at startup, and won't continue if not correct.

And it goes without saying that one should always work on a copy of the file, as -- in my own experience -- it's easier to make goofs when binary editing.

Good luck!

> This might be stating the obvious, but as a last-ditch solution, if you
> can't minimize text display with a command-line switch or a DOS Environment
> variable, you might be able to manually hack the text out using a
> hex/binary editor. (Of course, this makes the changes permanent.)

That's what I also had in mind, but I wanted to ask before.

> Search for the "offending" text string, and if it's an ASCII-Z string
> (ending with ASCII code 0), you can overwrite the string with ASCII zeroes.
> If it's a DOS string (ending with ASCII code 24h, the $ character), you
> can overwrite the string with ASCII code 24h. However, sometimes there's a
> catch: If the LF+CR line terminators (ASCII ODh+0Ah) are displayed by a
> separate subroutine (i.e., not embedded in the text string itself), there's
> probably nothing you can easily do to eliminate line feeds, but at least
> the annoying text will be gone. (Replaced by annoying blank lines!)

It was a little more difficult, because different tools used different methods for showing the banner.

Anyway, here are my results for some of the binaries in the 'binnt' directory:
Open Watcom Assembler Version 1.9 (wasm.exe)
0003AC00: D2 00
0003AC01: C4 00
0003AC02: 42 00

Open Watcom C16 Optimizing Compiler Version 1.9 (wcc.exe)
wccd.dll:
0001F855: B8 C3

Open Watcom C/C++16 Compile and Link Utility Version 1.9 (wcl.exe)
00002A44: B8 C3

Open Watcom Library Manager Version 1.9 (wlib.exe)
wlibd.dll:
000256E1: C9 00
000256E3: 6A 00

Open Watcom Linker Version 1.9 (wlink.exe)
wlinkd.dll:
0001D99F: BA EB
0001D9A0: 00 31

Open Watcom Make Version 1.9 (wmake.exe)
0000B8F8: 0A 00

All these tools now just show '... Version 1.9'.

> If the binary file has been compressed, it must of course be de-compressed
> before you edit it. You might want to first test that the de-compressed
> binary will still run -- sometimes programs do a checksum at startup, and
> won't continue if not correct.

The binaries were not compressed nor do they checksum at startup.

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Forum admin

I added patches for WASM and WLINK today.

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Forum admin