DOS ain't dead

REXX: Regina 3.5, 3.6 (with and without dynamic linking) (Developers)

posted by Rugxulo , Usono, 16.02.2012, 20:00
(edited by Rugxulo on 16.02.2012, 20:15)

Hi guys,
I don't know if anyone here has ever used REXX, but I have very lightly played with it recently. It's a nice little language, and Regina is a good implementation (portable, LGPL). You can compile it with various 386+ compilers (e.g. OpenWatcom, DJGPP).

One of the things about REXX is that it can load dynamic libraries (RxFuncAdd) to add functionality. But DOS doesn't easily support that. Sure, DJGPP 2.04 has DXE3, OpenWatcom + Causeway supports .DLLs, and HX with its Win32 emulation can use PE .DLLs too. But here I just use DJELF (despite not knowing what I was doing!), and it seems to work. (By default, for DOS targets, Regina doesn't support dynamic loading. So while all of the above are possible, nobody ever bothered. There's even an old bug/feature request for such on SourceForge from 2001!)

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/rexx/contrib/

Anyways, it's a quick hack, very kludgy, I didn't understand his makefiles, e.g. $(SHL), and I disabled external queues for simplicity (not a big deal, that would need Watt-32 and a packet driver anyways). This was version 3.5 as I didn't know 3.6 had (only just) been released yet.

Now 3.6 is out, but unlike 3.5, there is (so far) no official DOS build. So I built it the "standard" boring (old) way without dynamic loading. This one has no (minor) changes made by me, so it should work 100% as good as 3.5. It does enable external queues via Watt-32 and thus does require a packet driver for that particular feature. (To be honest, I don't know exactly what external queues are, perhaps persistent stack data between interpreter runs.) It should mostly run fine without it, though.

N.B. These are "unofficial" builds. Mark H. has been too busy too even (barely) email me about them, and he hasn't even had time to look at them. I made them over a month ago, which I know doesn't sound too long, but I was getting worried and impatient. Finally I just asked him if I could post my own in lieu of a gaping hole of nada, and he agreed. So here ya go.

I don't expect anyone to honestly mess with this, only posting about it publicly just in case someone finds it interesting.

Complete thread:

• REXX: Regina 3.5, 3.6 (with and without dynamic linking) - Rugxulo, 16.02.2012, 20:00 (Developers)