Open Watcom Pre-Release Now Available

An anonymous reader writes "I hadn't looked at it for a while, but it seems that the best compiler of the DOS ages has finally reached a pre-release version. openwatcom.com has finally released some source code. Now it'll be interesting to see how the Watcom compiler fares when compared to gcc/g++ on linux platforms. Hopefully both projects will also be able to benefit from one another."

pardon my ignorance, but ...

[josephgrossberg]

If it's from the MS-DOS era, and we already have gcc, what is the significance?

Re:pardon my ignorance, but ...

[sporty]

MS-DOS means nothing in the case of this compiler. It was a good optimizing compiler. I'm sure that gcc could benefit in some areas that watcom excelled and vice versa.

Re:pardon my ignorance, but ...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Watcom was for years considered the best optimizing compilerm much better than VC++. The reason "DOS Era" was mentioned because it was the best in the DOS era, before the days of Windows and Win32 flavor of the day complexity that pretty much forced you into some kind of toolkit like MFC and OWL. Watcom lost becuase it didn't really support these, not because it's compiler was bad.

The compiler doesn't list Linux as a target, and even if it did, I doubt if folks would switch to this compiler, too many gcc'isms in the kernel, and folks are just too used to gcc. But since it's open source, the optimizations may cross over, though I'm not an open source licence lawyer, so i don't know if the OpenWatcom license is compatible with cross-breeding with gcc. The only real issue I can think of is how well does it optimize for the latest generation of chips, Athlon and P4. I haven't followed Watcom development so I don't know if they're up to date on the latest chips (website didn't mention).

Re:pardon my ignorance, but ...

[91degrees]

As far as Linux goes, I'd quite like to see a crtoss compiler.

Personally, I rather liked the Watcom IDE. Not particulalry powerful, but it was nice for us "screen real estate misers" to have the compiler/project on a separate window from the code.

As far as crossbreeding goes, hopefully the Open Watcom team will realise that they can use parts of GCC if they ask the authors.

Re:pardon my ignorance, but ...

[Garen]

Since the FSF's policy with GCC requires contributors to sign over their copyrights, they hold all the "cards" so to speak with regard to giving permission -- and I don't think they would.

They would probably say that it would diminish software "freedom" in some way.

Re:pardon my ignorance, but ...

[Arandir]

Because a monoculture is bad. If you don't think it is, then why aren't you using Windows?

It is not a good thing that Unix-in-general has standardized on a single implementation of C/C++. The biggest example was the poor state of C++ under gcc five years ago. It was b0rked major. C++ programmers were told to stay away from Unix. To this day Unix people still associate C++ with Microsoft. It wasn't until Cygnus created the egcs fork that GNU woke up and realized that the world didn't revolve around C.

At work we had a guy spend a year porting code written for gcc-2.7 to gcc-2.9. Obviously a lot of this time was spent in regression testing, but a significant portion was simply trying to get it to build. Another major portion of his time was spent rewriting code that depended on 2.7 behavior that no longer exist.

License OK

[Euphonious Coward]

I read the license, and it looks (from a cursory reading) very good. Some of the language maybe ought to be slurped into the GPL, in fact, particularly the severability bits.

An interesting paragraph reads:

12.1 Termination. This License and the rights granted hereunder will terminate: ... (c) automatically without notice if You, at any time during the term of this License, commence an action for patent infringement (including as a cross claim or counterclaim) against Sybase or any Contributor.

So, contribute to a released version and get free patent licenses from anybody who uses it, or they have to stop using it. If this were added to the GPL it would mean more.

Re:License OK

[Yokaze]

I think this is more a way to protect themselves from law suits stemming from releasing this product under an open source license.
Someone on slashdot once wrote, that compilers are a patent-minefield.

Practically, you can't write a decent compiler without (unintentionally) infringing someones patent.

So, when they release the code, this someone might find out about it and might "commence an action for patent infringement", claiming in retrospect bazzilion dollars.

Been out for a while...

[Anonymous Coward]

... I've got the src zips with a file date of 02/08/23.

In the grand scheme of things, I doubt the compiler means much any more. Sybase rested far too long on their laurels, considering the Watcom compilers were EOL'd in late 1999 (IIRC). Fortunately, instead of letting the code rot, they've done The Right Thing [tm] and allowed it to be OpenSourced.

Of course, it doesn't hurt that SciTech Software has a not inconsiderable interest in Watcom. And, believe it or not, some people *do* still program for DOS. But the only reason to use Watcom over, say, DJGPP, would be for code that's written specifically for Watcom in the first place.

If you're interested and/or want to contribute to the OW project, there's two newsservers - forums.powersoft.com and news.openwatcom.org, where you can submit enquiries and whatnot.

Oh, and you can make the pre-release OpenWatcom binaries work with Mircosoft's Platform SDK, if you really want to. Another alternative to Visual Studio, if you don't mind a crappy IDE (real men use Makefiles anyway, right? :)