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Open Watcom 1.2 Released

Posted by timothy on from the for-your-fortran-needs dept.

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."

2 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. Back in the day.... by teambpsi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This was THE compiler to use with RTLINK/plus to build protected mode video games -- okay, protected mode anything

    and the only reason we used protected mode?

    BIG RAM BABY

    thanks to the (in)famous 640k 'barrier'

    though to some extent i'm not sure how relevant the toolset is today....

    --

    Old age and treachery almost always overcome youth and skill.
  2. Well, there's always GCC ... by Chromodromic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ... if you're a code masochist.

    Maybe I'm going out on a limb here, maybe I'll be the lonely voice in the wilderness, but for general purposes outside of a learning tool, I can't stand GCC. Why? There are so many reasons, I just don't know where to start.

    I hesitate a little to say this because everyone seems to speak so highly of it, at least everyone that I've ever heard. But I'm sorry, the Emperor has no clothes. Whenever I start a compile on GCC I can go downstairs, have dinner, watch an episode of the Simpsons and come upstairs to check on its progress, where the same compile on Borland (yes, I know, it's PROPRIETARY), or for that matter MSVC will have been done for quite some time. And with fewer complaints, moans and bitches from the compiler. And yes, I know full well that those moans and bitches are important, yadda, yadda, and maybe if I watched my warnings and cleaned my code, yadda, yadda, but call me crazy, call me wacky, I just like it when a compiler does its job and shuts up, unless it really has something important to say.

    Watcom is great, open, cross-platform, and cool. Do yourself a favor and use it. Just do it -- no! NO! Zip! Zip it! Shut! Zip! Zippity zip!

    --
    Chr0m0Dr0m!C