[fpc-devel] Beta Dos testers for 2.2.0a wanted

[Pierre Muller]

  As you might know, there is no Dos
distribution of 2.2.0 release yet.
  There are several reasons for this, but 
I am started a small branch that tries to 
get the minimal changes to get a usable Dos
release.

  This branch is on the svn repository under fixes_2_2_0_dos.
Using the 2.2.0 release sources to create a
Dos distribution results in a program that does not work at all
under raw Dos, mainly because of the fact that
you need to look for '*.*' to get all files under Dos
and '*' only lists files without extensions.

  The other more subtle problem seems to be related to
problems in the IDE while debugging when compiling with
optimizations set to -O2.

 Another problem was that the install.dat file,
used by the installer, was out of sync with the current
sources at release date. As this file is only used for
go32v2 and os2 and nobody really tried to generate them,
it got unnoticed.

  I uploaded to ftp.freepascal.org
under ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/fpc/beta/2.2.0a/go32v2
separate zip files, with install.exe and install.dat
files.

  The directory shortsep is for people
adventurous enough to try to test the installation
of the beta dist onto a system without LFN support.
The separate directory is for people who would like
to test the beta dist on Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/Vista
or on any Dos distribution having LFN or with
a TSR that adds LFN support on your favorite Dos 
system.

  I would like to get feedback on the stability of the
IDE (especially while debugging executables).
  If people are willing to help, it would be great to have
persons that would try to do a complete rebuilding
of the beta dist of their Dos system. Beware that you will need
quite a lot of free disk space for that...

  I am not really sure that using the sources included
in the same directory will work for that purpose, but 
attempts and failures should be reported on that list.

  The first step would be to install the sources,
and try to recompile everything by doing a
'make all OPT="-gl -O- -dDEBUG" UPXPROG=echo'
at source level.
  You should basically regenerate the same executable
(alltough the will not match completely as the date
is written somewhere inside the debugging information,
together with absolute pathes to the sources...)

  If someone is really willing to try to inspect deeper,
doing a second build, removing the -O- option
and check if the IDE generated that way behave 
as smoothly as when I tested the IDE compiled with 
-O-.

  By the way, the IDE being compiled with -dDEBUG, should have the 
ability to switch back and forth between graphic and text mode
and thus support debugging for graphic Dos application,
provided that you are only using modes defined in the Graph unit.

  For all answers, please state in the subject 
that you are usng the beta 2.2.0a for Dos,
I am not reading all threads of this mailing list.


Pierre Muller