DOS ain't dead

Rugxullo, some time ago you wrote somewhere (FreeDOS user list) about Euphoria - that developers need to test some feature.
Is it still actual?
What should we download and what to test?

---
DOS-u-akbar!

> Rugxulo, some time ago you wrote somewhere (FreeDOS user list) about
> Euphoria - that developers need to test some feature.
> Is it still actual?
> What should we download and what to test?


Rugxulo <rugxulo@xyz.xyz>  Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 7:24 PM
To: freedos-user@xyz.xyz
Hi,

On 12/4/10, Marco Achury <marcoachury@xyz.xyz> wrote:
>
> A serious bug keep frozen the development of Euphoria programming language
> for DOS about one year.  Now the bug appear to be solved and is needed
> testing
> and help to update the DOS branch with new features included on Win and
> Linux.
>
> <cid:part1.04090108.07090704@xyz.xyz>See at:
> http://openeuphoria.org/forum/m/113776.wc

"For convenience, you can download a complete tarball of the DOS
Euphoria source code here:

http://rapideuphoria.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/rapideuphoria/dos/trunk.tar.gz?view=tar
"

Why nobody bothered to keep it at least compiling with OpenWatcom
(Win32 host) is beyond me. You can't fix anything if it won't even
compile. It is far from obvious what to do to build this (no
instructions in docs). configure.bat won't run in DOS (uses CMD.EXE
features), and --without-euphoria apparently doesn't work anyways. One
IRC dude suggests using binary build from Jeremy's site "as close to
r2433 as possible", so that's here (4 MB):

http://jeremy.cowgar.com/eubins/windows/eu40-2434.zip

But I'm out of time now, so I'll have to try this again later. Just
FYI in case anybody else wants to (also) try.


> FYI in case anybody else wants to (also) try.

Thanks. I also had a look into the Euphoria programming language DOS issue. These are the 2 main OpenEuphoria forum discussions which will bring anyone unfamiliar with the issue up to speed:

Version 4.1.4b No Longer Supports Dos
Open Call for DOS Developers

Euphoria's Wikipedia entry has been updated to say "Version 3.1.1 remains an important milestone release being the last version of Euphoria which supports the Microsoft MS-DOS platform." with a external reference link to "Platform Specific Issues" which basically says that DOS support has now been dropped.

Marco Achury who was quoted by Rugxulo above maintains a page called:
Euphoria Programming Language for DOS Users which has distributions and installation instructions.

> instructions in docs). configure.bat won't run in DOS (uses CMD.EXE
> features),
Reviewing configure.bat in eu40-2434.zip I can see a rewrite of that batch file for DOS would be fairly easy.

> and --without-euphoria apparently doesn't work anyways.
Euphoria scripts appear to be used for various things like formatting docs, again not apparent major issue in doing a build with a compiler.

However what I do wonder: is there sufficient Euphoria demand for someone to spend the time maintaining a DOS port anyway? Why do I wonder this? Well because I noticed a serious lack of any significant historical Euphoria related traffic on Newgroups (Google groups), RapidEuphoria's own archives from 1996 (well posts from Dec 1997...) and this post by Marco Achury in 2008 on freedos-devel. All of which added together make me wonder if a dedicated DOS port is worth saving? Perhaps it is. So Marco, if you are reading perhaps the best solution for you to work forward would be to work a DOS build with the Euphoria developers using Japheth's HX DOS Extender instead.


Note: There is a apparently a Win32 based work allowing the last DOS version and Win32 version to be run side by side which someone has already come up with: How to run both Euphoria version 3.1.1 and version 4.0 beta 4 on same computer.