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void main{}

Ack! You must be an old school coder! For your information, you cannot have main not returning an integer in standard C or C++. It is invalid code.

The following links should help refine your coding style. I only mention this because a) I am pedantic, and b) because I happen to believe new programmers reading this list shouldn't have to read crappy, non-compliant code (especially when the C standard has been around more than 10 years):

http://www.eskimo.com/~scs /readings/voidmain.960823.html

http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/v2faq /faq22_25.html

And one of my favorite alt.lang.learnc-c++ contributors, Jack Klein:
http://home.att.net/~jackklein /ctips01.html#int_main

Stuart
*slashdot pedant*

Here's what I will use when I grow up, get a job, my own address and own computer and internet account.
I am getting so paranoid and worried seeing all the basic freedoms slip away that first of all, in the real world, I will try to give as little information about me as possible. I already do this on the net.
And for my internet use, I will use Freedom from zero Knowledge. It can make your online activity totally private. So you write your program and unleash it on the unsuspecting netizens totally anonymous.
And if you're worried about compilers putting strings in the executable, why not use some free compilers like DJGPP or Cygnus? You can always find a free compiler with sources so you know exactely what it does, or just distribute the source code.

Visual Bloat++ probably won't fit on a PocketPC, but I could definitely see some porting group produce Pocket GCC like another group (a Cygnus splinter group) produced DJGPP, the DOS-based GCC we know and love.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

GAS doesn't count; that was obviously intended for a compiler to use and it's extremely painful to write code for it; doubly so if you're used to writing Intel syntax rather than AT&T

Latest binutils (2.10) reportedly supports Intel syntax with a switch.

The newest releases of DJGPP Binutils reportedly support a switch in as to get support for Intel-style assembly syntax. Ask further on the newsgroup.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

I use three different versions of GCC (for Linux, DOS, and even Windows, and they all accepted the DOS-style CR+LF newlines in my game's source code. Could that be because CR+LF is also the standard in many RFCs?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

And things like Delorie Lynx Viewer, Delorie Web Page Purifier, HTML PrettyPrinter, Delories Search Engine Simulator for starters - oh, don't forget last weeks Slashdotted site DejaVu for viewing sites in 'old browsers'.

And things like Delorie Lynx Viewer, Delorie Web Page Purifier, HTML PrettyPrinter, Delories Search Engine Simulator for starters - oh, don't forget last weeks Slashdotted site DejaVu for viewing sites in 'old browsers'.

Richy C.
--

And things like Delorie Lynx Viewer, Delorie Web Page Purifier, HTML PrettyPrinter, Delories Search Engine Simulator for starters - oh, don't forget last weeks Slashdotted site DejaVu for viewing sites in 'old browsers'.

Richy C.
--

And things like Delorie Lynx Viewer, Delorie Web Page Purifier, HTML PrettyPrinter, Delories Search Engine Simulator for starters - oh, don't forget last weeks Slashdotted site DejaVu for viewing sites in 'old browsers'.

Richy C.
--

But if you're thinking of using this to check web page accessibility, check out the Web Page Backward Compatibility Viewer instead.

Y'know, DJ Delorie (http://www.delorie.com) has a bunch of stuff like this thing.

Here's the Lynx viewer.
The Purifier
and the Compatibility Viewer.

Y'know, DJ Delorie (http://www.delorie.com) has a bunch of stuff like this thing.

Here's the Lynx viewer.
The Purifier
and the Compatibility Viewer.

Y'know, DJ Delorie (http://www.delorie.com) has a bunch of stuff like this thing.

Here's the Lynx viewer.
The Purifier
and the Compatibility Viewer.

(from the 1999 Free Software Award Nominee page)

• 1.Tom Adelstein
• 2.Eric Allman
• 3.Lennart Augustsson
• 4.Stig Bakken
• 5.Donald Becker
• 6.Brian Behlendorf
• 7.Tim Berners-Lee -- inventor of the World Wide Web
• 8.Jim Blandy
• 9.Craig Burley
• 10.Thomas Bushnell
• 11.Shane Caraveo
• 12.James Clark
• 13.Alan Cox -- major Linux kernel hacker
• 14.Miguel de Icaza
• 15.DJ Delorie -- DJGPP
• 16.Theo De Raadt -- founder of the OpenBSD project
• 17.Matthias Ettrich
• 18.Paul Eggert
• 19.Ralf S. Engelschall
• 20.Fred Fish
• 21.Olivier Fourdan
• 22.Fractint Team
• 23.John Gilmore
• 24.Andi Gutmans
• 25.Chuck Hagenbuch
• 26.Carsten Haitzler
• 27.Charles Hannum
• 28.Shawn Hargreaves -- Allegro game programming library
• 29.Geoff Harrison
• 30.Mike Heins
• 31.Joey Hess
• 32.Earl Hood
• 33.Jordan K. Hubbard
• 34.Dan Ingalls
• 35.Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen
• 36.Kyle Jones
• 37.Bill Joy -- Sun, vi editor
• 38.Alexandre Julliard
• 39.Mike Karels
• 40.Jeremy Katz
• 41.Spencer Kimball
• 42.Donald E. Knuth -- author of Art of Computer Programming
• 43.Werner Koch
• 44.Alfredo Kenji Kojima
• 45.Jeffrey A. Law
• 46.Patrick Lenz
• 47.Marc Lehmann
• 48.Rasmus Lerdorf
• 49.Mark Linton
• 50.Paul Mackerras
• 51.Peter Mattias
• 52.Doug McEachern
• 53.Caolan McNamara
• 54.Kirk McKusick
• 55.Bram Moolenaar
• 56.Tobias Oetiker
• 57.Tim O'Reilly -- O'Reilly books
• 58.John Ousterhout
• 59.Dave Rand
• 60.Brian Paul
• 61.Nicholas Petreley
• 62.Bernhard Rosenkraenzer
• 63.Alessandro Rubini
• 64.Dr Douglas Schmidt
• 65.Keith Sklower
• 66.W. Richard Stevens -- Unix Network Programming
• 67.Darryl Strauss, Zeev Suraski
• 68.Danny ter Haar
• 69.Andrew Tridgell
• 70.Jorrit Tyberghein
• 71.Bert Tyler
• 72.Guido van Rossum -- Python programming language
• 73.Miquels van Smoorenburg
• 74.Wietse Venema
• 75.Paul Vixie -- cron daemon
• 76.Patrick Volkerding
• 77.Tim Wegner
• 78.Jim Winstead
• 79.Jamie Zawinski
• 80.Phil Zimmerman.

Granted, some of these have been covered already, but maybe a handful at the most. I must confess to maybe knowing who 10% of these people are. I would sure like to know something about the rest of them. Just imagine all the cool stuff each of these people has to offer--why in the world are we looking to interview inflamatory, damaging people like JP?

Just trying to help :-) I figure 80 some odd suggestions should keep you busy for a while.

Well, BeOS is fast, that's for sure. You might also want to look at the Linux BIOS page - it promises VERY fast linux loading... when the work is done.

If all you want is a GUI of some type, DOS + Win 3.1 will load very fast, if you arrange it nicely. There's a DOS version of the GNU compiler environment here, so you can do C/C++ development under DOS, but I don't know about a GUI IDE. I recall there are several text IDEs.

DOS won't take up too much space, either, so you might be able to keep Win98 on there for other boot times.

Hook em up with DJGPP under windows, and set them up a linux partition. Get them hot for Linux, teach them about sysadmining. Help them hook up a webserver/irc server and such! They'll eat it up and be kernel hackers in no time. Hook em up with some 3D programming libs under linux. They'll take a shining to the sheer programmability of *nixes over windows. Have a blast!

How about if the OS has been documented by the producer admiting to the existance of oh, say 65000 bugs?

It seems that M$ reported 65,535 confirmed issues because anything higher than that would overflow the data type unsigned short. Sounds like they wrote their bug tracker with an old 16-bit DOS compiler. The scandiskers (can't say fsckers; this is M$) should have used this 32-bit compiler (a Free one at that) to make their bug tracker...

Stallman calls it GNU/Linux because most of what fills /.../bin comes from the GNU system, and it even uses GNU libc. It is a GNU system, just running on a kernel called Linux.

Just because it uses GCC doesn't make it a GNU system. Otherwise, you'd have GNU/DOS (gcc here) and GNU/Win32 (no wait, that's Cygwin, but there's another Win32 gcc).

http:\\slashdot.org\

Try right-clicking an empty area of the Windows® 98 taskbar and choosing Toolbars > Address. Now click in the address box (you may need to make your taskbar bigger) and type \windows\system and notice how Windows changes backslashes to forward slashes. The only reason Windows uses \ instead of / is bug compatibility with MS-DOS 1.0, which used / instead of - to specify option switches on the command line. When subdirectories, device drivers, and other features imitating Unix® were hacked into DOS 2, the Unix-like / directory separator was already taken, so they had to use \. Anyway, DOS is perfectly happy if apps pass it / (command.com blocks it because of the option problem), and it's the default for the DOS Bourne Again Shell, part of the DJGPP port of GNU.

#include <dos.h>
int main() { sound(2600); return 0; }

I'd post a binary at my web page, but I'm booted into GNU/Linux at the moment. But don't try phreaking with it: the phone company now has a "blue box" alarm.

GNU/Linux is a GNU system largely because its libc is GNU libc. Solaris would probably have Sun libc. Windows has MSVCRT; does Cygwin or the like turn Windows into GNU/Windows? I believe DOS + DJGPP = GNU/DOS; what do you say?

Mr Stallman-

I noticed that way back in June 1988 on one of the installments of GNU's Bulletin (vol. 1, no. 5), you urged people to avoid purchasing Macintoshes or writing programs targetting the Macintosh platform, as a protest against Apple's role in the look-and-feel copyright lawsuits.

Do you still urge developers not to write code for the Macintosh platform? Even code that falls under the GPL? Obviously you're not completely ignoring Apple, since you wrote a commentary on their attempt at an open source license some months back.

I would think that the benefits of pushing GPL'd code onto as many platforms as possible, (thus further spreading the GNU Message and making more people aware of the benefits of Free Software), would outweigh the drawbacks of providing support for a platform that is backed by a company whose business practices one does not agree with.

-Felix

Heck, you can get POSIX in DOS through the C libraries in DJGPP, a port of the GNU C++ Compiler to protected mode DOS.

I get paid to read /.; why don't you?

[Remember the suggestion that Daylight Savings Time last longer in the USA west coast on Presidential election years? Zoneinfo could have handled it.]

Between DOS and windows that company we all love to hate decided to change character sets. Suddenly three letters in the swedish alphabet have a new character code. One and a half decades later (count that in internet time...) we are still struggling with documents with mixed encoding.

That means every damn application has to provide a way to recode OEM to Ansi. AND deal with users who tries to do this conversion on files already converted.

DJGPP is gcc plus the gnu tool set that runs on DOS/Windows, and produces 32-bit DOS compatible code.

I wish computers came bundled with progamming tools knowadays - DJGPP is free - BCC is free - there are lots of free graphics libraries, networking libraries etc, how come manufacturers dont bundle a programming language with their Dell Inspirons? (et al). I guess it's because warez are all over the internet now - less people are forced to write their own games for entertainment.

Ben Nolan

This news isn't interesting for normal slashdos readers. This download is for windows users only and it's only the command line compiler tools with very little documentation and a few examples.

Actually, I think this release is for people who already has an (earlier) version of Borland C++ Builder. With this update, they can get the newest version of the c++ compiler without upgrading their C Builder Suite. It's like and free update, faster compiling (or whatever is better with version 5.5) without spending money on a newer product.

People without the BDE can of course also use this to compile programs and such, but except for the speed of the compiler and the size of the download (only 5-7 megabytes), you won't get anything DJGPP or any of the other c/c++ compilers for windows/dos has.

Just in case anyone actually is interested, check out D. J. Delorie's The Ace of Penguins.

Or at least make time unsigned like it is on DJGPP. That would buy us an extra 70 years to get 64-bit machines.

On that note: Wasn't the original Quake for DOS written using DJ's gcc?

OMG, I feel so clueless. I never knew DJ Delorie made anything other than a solitaire/freecell clone for Linux/Xwindows called Ace of Penguins! For my girlfriend, this has been one of the "killer apps" for Linux.

When I first installed Linux on my home PC, my girlfriend was so mad because she couldn't play Solitaire and Freecell anymore (I didn't know about WINE at the time). So we made a deal - if I could find a way for her to play those games, then she wouldn't fuss about me keeping Linux on the PC. DJ Delorie's "Ace of Penguins" came through for me, and the rest is history.

So I guess both the techies (DJGPP) and the home users (like my gf and myself) have DJ Delorie to thank for some great pieces of free software. He is definitely a worthy selection.

If Linux hadn't been GPLed I wouldn't be where I am today, let alone Linux:).

I don't know about your percentage there (ie I think 90% is a little high, 70-80%, maybe). Why? DJGPP is quite popular amounst knowledgable dos/windows users, especially the younger ones. Before djgpp got a newsgroup (comp.os.msdos.djgpp IIRC), the mailing list had something like 500 users, and this was in 95. In 97, the newsgroup/mailing list (gatewayed) was producing about 100 messages a day, so I'ld guess that at the time there were about half as many people posting to c.o.m.d. as there are to the current lk list. Many, if not most, of the djgpp users `got' the free software bit, though mainly the beer part and there were plenty of license flamewars in that sub-community. In fact, it was djgpp that got me into linux (in a round about way).

However, you're right that without free tools, there's not a lot of point to free software, but most of the gnu utilitles have been ported to djgpp, so other than the OS itself, dos programming these days is just a free as for Linux, and very easy to install (download several .zip files, unzip, adjust autoexec.bat and off you go). I haven't really used djgpp for about two years now, but that's because I've been using Linux. I'm not sure I'ld have been as comfortable starting out on my Linux adventure if it hadn't been for djgpp as that environment got me used to the tools used in Linux (they're essentially the same).

Another excellent free beer editor for Windows text (and HTML) is Notetab . Emacs for DOS is also available from DJGPP.

my copy of visual studio 6 is still in shrink

Sure it is. Reminds me of high school when the ugly skanks would yip about how they don't have boyfriends because they don't agree with it philisophically, etc. Quite humorous because it's so transparent.

I always thought one of the great things about *nix open-source was the availability of good, free tools (gcc, perl etc.) tools so that ANY user could use and make changes to that source code.

Delorie DJGPP YEARS. However, I personally use MS VC++ 6.0 and Delphi due to them both being far superior in their respective realms to any open source software (and I can only qualify those who claim otherwise as zealots or people who really haven't a clue what they're talking about). You don't hear about free development tools in the Windows realm simply because most people's time is far too valuable to waste playing around with freeware.

It is always interesting when these debates of applications come up because it brings up the interesting cult-like movement: People start to equate applications with the OS. If Office 2000 were ported to Linux, to me that would represent an application called Office 2000 that happened to be running on Linux. It's an APPLICATION. ICQ is ICQ. Netscape is Netscape. The 1970s blurring of the lines that are attempted to hail the mighty penguin are both antiquated and ridiculous.

On the other hand, the documentation that I've read for various GNU software is excellent. Coming to mind immediately is documentation for emacs, emacs-lisp, bison, and gdb. The problem is that you either need to print it out or suffer with the various info readers. (Or, you can read a lot of these in nicely formatted HTML at delorie.com/.)

GNU docs are not quite as copious, but significantly more useful, than any perl docs I've read.