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Open Watcom Effort Makes First Public Release

Posted by timothy on from the what-you-pay-for dept.

epowers writes: "It's been a long time since /. ran this story, but a few days ago the Open Watcom Project made it's first public release. It's only a binary patch targeted at 11.0a/b owners, but it's still an important roadmark on the way to the planned full open source release of both the Watcom C/C++ and Fortran compilers. Most programmers, particularly game programmers, should remember the amount of prestige id software's DOOM generated for the Watcom compiler and the sudden proliferation of 32-bit DOS games with the tell-tale "DOS/4GW" startup banner. The download is available for free, but Open Watcom requests a $1-$50 donation to help support the development effort required to remove code Sybase doesn't own and to prepare the open source release."

6 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Ruminations: Will it merge with gcc? by earthforce_1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I wonder if this will be released under a GPL license? If so, when this puppy gets into the pulic domain, there will be anything worth merging into gcc, or vice versa? Or whether the two compilers themselves will ultimately be merged into one product?

    --
    My rights don't need management.
    1. Re:Ruminations: Will it merge with gcc? by reynaert · · Score: 5, Insightful

      gcc is portable to dozens of different architectures, and can relatively easily be ported to new architectures or new languages. That's a very impressive feat.

      Watcom generates very optimal code for the i386. That's also a very impressive feat.

      In other words, but compilers are extremely good in what they are designed for.

  2. How much use is this in the modern era? by Ryu2 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not a troll. 32-bit flat memory, etc. under DOS was cool in the early 90s, but really how viable is it in this day and age?

    --
    There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
  3. Re:Hmm by reynaert · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People are already writing very gcc-specific code for Linux. I've often seen that installation instructions for other Unices begin with 'install gcc'.

  4. ... and please donate! by burtonator · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Really cool that they are requesting donations. I think it is important for people to realize that Free Software (as in liberty) isn't always free (as in money).

    I think that if developers would use systems like paypal more we would see in increase in free software!

    Kevin

  5. Re:Hmm by BlowCat · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Your question contains the answer. We need another compiler for Linux so that the developers could check that they didn't occasionally wrote any "silly compiler dependent code" without having to reboot or to login to a box with the other compiler.

    Actually, more often the code is not silly, it's just that some compilers accept some quirky code, and the others don't.