Hi,

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 2:30 AM, Mateusz Viste <mate...@viste-family.net> wrote:
>
> maybe a nice solution would be to create multiple packages, where every
> package would contain a part of OW
> - then the end user could download only what he wants/needs/uses.

Well, I figured a full "DOS only" download was better than full
"everything" already. Trying to split into smaller pieces might be
nice, but it's quite tedious. It's hard to decide what is best for
everyone, so usually people just throw everything and the kitchen sink
in there.

Sure, you can be ultra minimal in some instances, but most people want
full C++ support, help files, debugger, vi editor, various DOS
extenders, and libraries for all the various memory models.

> That's more or less what I did when packaging DJGPP (although for DJGPP
> it was much easier, because DJGPP provides some 'package segmentation'
> already):

Just a few comments:

1). At minimum, you must always have the *.h headers and libc + libm
(djdev*), GCC proper (gcc*), and BinUtils (bnu*). There's very little
possible use for anything less than that.

2). RHIDE is old (IIRC, built only with G++ 3.3.6) and won't be
further updated, but it does (mostly) work well. It has its own
debugger, RHGDB, based upon older GDB (6.3, in Andris' last 1.5c
snapshot, IIRC). But that relies on COFF debug info, which is somewhat
limited and even broken in later (4.5.x or newer) GCC releases. So in
that case, GDB is "better" (though less friendly to use, even with
--tui). RHIDE is also basically SETEDIT editor, thus it has built-in a
Info reader, so you don't also need Texinfo.

3). Bison and Flex are rarely needed. I don't ever use them (and don't
understand their syntax anyways). Some few projects need them to build
from sources, but not many do.

4). Make and GPP speak for themselves. A lot of projects need these,
e.g. p7zip, UPX, Dungeon Crawl, etc. Well, even latest GCC 4.8.x is
built with G++ nowadays.

5). The FAQ is ridiculously useful but quite old by now. It's lacking
in some areas because of that. Honestly, a lot of that has to do with
various workarounds in different environments, which seems to be a
stumbling block for many users. That's a bottomless pit, almost,
because nobody can stabilize on one environment. (NTVDM isn't as
useful nor widespread as it used to be, and less emphasis has been
made on building complex packages from atop other environments.)

6). Objective C ... I don't grok it, it seems interesting, but quite
honestly I'm not sure if (barely) anybody has ever even properly
tested this under DJGPP. The few projects I've seen that use this
language rely heavily on third-party libs (GNUstep or similar), which
I'm not sure will work (well, if at all) on DJGPP. At least, I can't
name one public project that ever used this for DJGPP.

7). As far as dependencies go, GNU software (and thus many Linux
projects) assume a lot more than just these. Just off the top of my
head: m4, tar + gzip, sed, awk, grep, bash, pdcurses, diff + patch,
coreutils (file + text + shell utils), etc. It's almost endless!   :-)

> Anyway, maybe a similar method could be applied to OW, so users who
> wants it all could just install all packages, and users who need only a
> minimalistic compiler would just get the equivalent of Rugxulo's 7z file.

The existing .7z is a "full" DOS install with everything DOS-related.
It could be slimmed if someone didn't want all the fluff, e.g only
wanted to recompile the FreeDOS kernel. I made a small .7z like that
in the past, and it would fit on a floppy (so ~1.4 MB when
compressed). But I'm not sure how many people would find that useful.

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