[fpc-pascal] Fpc running in Zeta?

[Matt Emson]

> The wikipedia article about zeta doesn´t look very promissing:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnussoft_ZETA

That's a bit political thing. Bernd Kortz is the guy that licensed the code
from Palmsource/Access. He's the guy we need to worry about ;-)

> > As porting FPC to BeOS for PowerPC is impossible, I'll not dwell on that
;-)
>
> why?

It uses Apple's PEF as its binary format, it uses Metrowerks as its C++
compiler (mwcc, mwld et al) and no assembler was ever produced (bar inline
assembler.) Without an assembler, or bintools that target PEF, there's
simply no way to make FPC work natively. Interestingly, the C++ ABI is the
same as the one Apple Mac's use (seemingly) as least with Metrowerks tools.
If Metrowerks ever released a Codewarrior MWOB binary objectfile compatible
assembler in source form, porting it would be fairly simple and I guess it
would make an FPC port more likely.

I ran some tests a few years ago, and Metrowerks CW 9 (latest version I
have - runs under MacOS X) and Metrowerks CW 6 both produce valid BeOS
executables if you use the Be headers and libs (copied to MacOS obviously.)
I guess, it's possible to hack a command like assembler from MacOS to work,
but I wouldn't like to try to do it... Some kind of compatibility lib might
work with *a lot* of work.

BeOS for PPC is a dead end though. Not worth the effort. Maybe in my
retirement in 30 odd years ;-)

M