DOS ain't dead - Open Watcom "Next Generation"

Japheth

Germany (South),
20.03.2025, 14:11

Open Watcom "Next Generation" (Announce)

Hello,

found on VOGONS that Open Watcom is resurrecting: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=105602

I did a quick test of the DOS binaries of that test version.

On the negative side:

- it's virtually at the v1.9 state. WDC, for example, crashes, as it did in v1.9.
- binaries are still linked to use DOS/4GW - bad if DOS/4GW v1.7 is used, since it has a 32 MB limit, AFAIR.
- some binaries are "lousy" linked, reporting "This is a DOS/4G binary" when launched directly.

Positive:

- DOS version of WD works - the DOS WD of OW 2.0 on github is dysfunctional since at least 1 year.

---
MS-DOS forever!

tkchia

20.03.2025, 15:48

@ Japheth

Open Watcom "Next Generation"

Post reply

Hello Japheth,

Thanks, interesting news. Some quick thoughts:

(1) I sure hope the openwatcom.org compiler lineage is solidly tested (for code generation bugs). I am hearing some less than pleasant things about Jiri Malak's wcc fork in this area (https://www.os2museum.com/wp/tracking-down-a-bug/)...

(2) The licensing terms are the same as before ("Source code is available under the Sybase Open Watcom Public License").

---
https://gitlab.com/tkchia · https://codeberg.org/tkchia · 😴 "MOV AX,0D500H+CMOS_REG_D+NMI"

Japheth

Germany (South),
21.03.2025, 08:21

@ tkchia

Open Watcom "Next Generation"

Post reply

> (1) I sure hope the openwatcom.org compiler lineage is solidly tested (for
> code generation bugs). I am hearing some less than pleasant things about
> Jiri Malak's wcc fork in this area

I also have the opinion that Jiri seems to be a big believer in progress and hence is focused on 64-bit support, sometimes neclecting the DOS part of OW 2.0 a bit. :-D

However, the main problem I have with OW 2.0 is that there's no "stable" release, just monthly "snapshots".

---
MS-DOS forever!

lifelike

14.04.2025, 21:01

@ Japheth

Open Watcom "Next Generation"

Post reply

> I also have the opinion that Jiri seems to be a big believer in progress
> and hence is focused on 64-bit support, sometimes neclecting the DOS part
> of OW 2.0 a bit. :-D
>
> However, the main problem I have with OW 2.0 is that there's no "stable"
> release, just monthly "snapshots".

So what version is a good choice for DOS 16-bit development (mainly C, probably no need for C++)?

Looked at the various versions on GitHub and it is a bit confusing. It also looks like a huge difference in size between versions, from just a few MB to hundreds of MB. The former sounds more reasonable to me (compared to the about 1.5 MB needed for the full 16-bit large memory mode c+asm+make+link toolchain from Microsoft: https://github.com/microsoft/MS-DOS/tree/main/v4.0/src/TOOLS).

As long as some old version from Watcom is reasonably bug-free I don't really see a huge reason to worry about newer versions. Maybe if they finally do something about the the license that might be worth upgrading for? https://github.com/open-watcom/open-watcom-v2/discussions/271