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Open Watcom 1.2 Released
An anonymous reader writes "Open Watcom 1.2 has been released and is now available
for download from
the Open Watcom website. This release contains a large number of new
features, product enhancements and several fixs designed to bring Open Watcom
to a higher level of quality and compatibility. SciTech software Inc, the official
maintainers of the Open Watcom project, have also announced the availability
of an updated Open
Watcom CD, complete with SciTechs installer for DOS,
OS/2, and windows. Support for the update will be handled exclusively through
the Open Watcom website. Read More." According to the web site, "the Watcom C/C++ and Fortran products will be the first mass market, proprietary compilers to be Open Sourced."
The Watcom compiler was a very popular DOS C/C++ compiler. Combined with DOS4GW from Tenberry (formerly Rational Systems), it was used to create many DOS games such as Doom. Traditional DOS compilers were only 16-bit tools whereas Watcom was 32-bit
SciTech scooped up Watcom's goods. They're also behind MGL, wxWindows, SNAP for Linux, Display Doctor, and GLDirect.
Maybe you've got a ton of old code that only runs on OS/2/DOS and wouldn't compile cleanly under GCC?
>> Most importantly, does it support Expanded and Extended memory?
> I *believe* it comes with a free DOS extender, so yes. It certainly has support for several (once-)common ones.
From the Open Watcom site:
"Free DOS extenders included!
Open Watcom C/C++ and FORTRAN includes a number of royalty free and Open Source DOS extenders right out of the box. Thanks to Tenberry Software's gracious donation, the original DOS/4GW DOS extender from Watcom C/C++ and FORTRAN is included royalty free with the Open Watcom compilers. Also included is the now free CauseWay DOS extender developed by Michael Devore. Both binaries are included as well as complete source code in the source archives. Finally we have also included the free PMODE/W and DOS/32A DOS extenders as part of the package."
--
Paul
http://www.openwatcom.org/about/info_content.ht
One could say what is the point of starting the fsf/gcc project. It dont run on anything other than what the devs started on... At the time they started working on it I mean.. not now
---
OpenWatcom is there for Linux too, you just need to compile it from source code.
....
It's already 100% functional as a cross-compiler
(from Linux too DOS/Windows/OS/2 but still not there yet as a native compiler: it has to use it's own libc and cannot output ELF objects (only ELF executables). The debugger works too, but
symbolic debugging only works with OW compiled
executables.
That means it's fine for statically linked plain ANSI C executables on Linux but does not integrate very well with the GNU toolchain, X libraries,
Fact is, gcc uses more memory -- a LOT more memory -- than most other compilers, especially when optimizing. That makes it much more likely that you'll have to hit the swap file, which of course, kills your speed.
Another problem is GNU make, while more flexible and powerful than the make systems for borland, msvc, etc, is also much slower. If you use something like jam instead, you'll see build times drop significantly.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Compared to current gcc's it's ... gcc on Windows has a ported feel, some people don't like that, some others don't mind or like it) :)
* a very fast compiler (compile-time speed)
* that produces very compact code (in terms of size)
* so the generated code *may* even be faster than gcc's (if a loop just fits in the cache), despite the fact that gcc has quite a few more years of optimization improvements now.
* it also feels more native on non-UNIX platforms
(whatever that means
* can generate 16-bit code, useful for bootloaders (and FreeDOS
* even supports "far" (48-bit) pointers in protected mode
* all in all very good for embedded and driver work IMHO
on the other hand GCC is much better now in terms of standard compliance (in particularly C++); OW is slowly catching up a bit, has a more extensive warning system, supports SSE(2), custom Athlon and p4 optimizations, profile guided optimization, supports many other CPUs,
etc etc.
Adaptive Server Enterprise
Adaptive Server Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL)
IQ
Ah....MySQL and Access, you must be talking about ASA. I suspect it unlikely that ASA become open source in the foreseeable future as it is one of the key products of iAnywhere.
ASA is a much more feature rich and powerful replacement for both above mentioned database-like repositories ;-).
For those who don't know, ASA runs on a multitude of platforms (Palm, CE, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HPUX, OS X, and that MS-Windows thingy). It has very mature synchronization and replication technologies. [Note: I may be somewhat biased on the subject ;-)].
There were industry rumours of Sybase dropping SQL Anywhere (formerly Watcom SQL, now Adaptive Server Anywhere) early on after the 1995 acquisition, but nothing beyond apparently.
The ASA engineering group (Waterloo Ontario) and ASE group (Dublin California) have worked together on joint projects, but the two products remain independently architected and developed. The main joint task forces seem to work(ed) on adding T-SQLisms to ASA and on the IQ product.