Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Fri, Jul 8, 2016 at 10:22 AM, dos386  wrote:
>
>> I've never used QB64 but have heard some stuff about it.
>> For one, it uses a C++ compiler as backend, no?
>
> http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=8785 (shots and
> links are dead, unfortunately)
> http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=8891

Yes, I vaguely remember, but HX trickery isn't really "DOS".

>> doing some reading on the pros/cons of FreeBASIC vs QB64
>
> EXE's from Q64 used to depend from only 8 MiO DLL bloat back in 2010
> ... no clue how far it works nowadays 6 years later.

No idea if it behaves better or not. But, again, it has no DOS port,
so it's less interesting (to me).

> AFAIK FreeBASIC still works in DOS (check the forum) ...

Yeah, it still works, I can successfully rebuild FBMD5 under QEMU with
latest FBC.   :-)

> although the DGJPP bloat is a bit frustrating.

Free Pascal is better (thanks to smartlinking and no libc dependency).

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[dos386]

> I've never used QB64 but have heard some stuff about it.
> For one, it uses a C++ compiler as backend, no?

http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=8785 (shots and
links are dead, unfortunately)
http://www.bttr-software.de/forum/forum_entry.php?id=8891

> doing some reading on the pros/cons of FreeBASIC vs QB64

EXE's from Q64 used to depend from only 8 MiO DLL bloat back in 2010
... no clue how far it works nowadays 6 years later.

AFAIK FreeBASIC still works in DOS (check the forum) ... although the
DGJPP bloat is a bit frustrating.

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

I'm no expert, so I've only lightly dabbled.

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
> I see it is back up now.

Like I said before, the compiler has been around (even heavily
developed) for 12 years! It's no toy but instead a mature tool at this
point.

> I had been doing some reading on the pros/cons of FreeBASIC vs QB64. Not 
> looking to start a flame war here,
> but I had decided to invest some time with FreeBASIC when the site went down. 
> I thought perhaps that was an
> early portent that I had picked the "wrong" compiler.

I've never used QB64 but have heard some stuff about it. For one, it
uses a C++ compiler as backend, no?

FreeBASIC is a fully native compiler (written in itself), albeit not
really optimizing, although it does also have an optional C (GCC)
output backend. The DOS version is based upon DJGPP's libc (and uses
DJGPP ports of GNU BinUtils), so it's compatible with anything (e.g.
libs) that already works with that.

fbhelp is really helpful (no pun intended) for looking up what's
supported. A lot of that is taken directly from the wiki. Also, the
DOS FAQ is quite helpful, too (thanks to DOS386).

> I see that Black Annex is probably written with QB64

But I (barely) disagree that the above is the "best QB game ever"
since, quite honestly, there were hundreds of really amazing (DOS
graphical) games written for vanilla QBasic interpreter. Well, at
least I always found them amazing. Even though I never worked on any,
they were always really really beyond what you would normally consider
appropriate for QB (so Gorillas is not the ultimate example I'd give,
there were many programs way way better than that ... although even
that is probably better than Donkey, heh, sorry Bill).

FYI, there's a truly brilliant genius named Joel who has written a lot
of cool stuff (even using QuickBASIC, e.g. NES emulator):

https://www.youtube.com/user/Bisqwit

> Does anyone have any experience or tips working with the DOS version of 
> FreeBASIC in FreeDOS that they'd like to share?
>
> If not, thanks for humoring me this far in the thread.

It has several supported "dialects", e.g. "fb" or "fblite" or "qb".
While the QB (and VBDOS) compatibility isn't 100%, it's better than
nothing. Of course, I think they more or less recommend all new code
be written in "improved" dialects like "fb", which offers a lot of
advantages. Though I'm not honestly sure if they ever finished with
the OOP support. (It's at least partially supported, though.)

Oh, you can also do inline asm (although that's not as easy as it
sounds with DPMI/pmode).

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Abe Mishler]

I see it is back up now. I had been doing some reading on the pros/cons of 
FreeBASIC vs QB64. Not looking to start a flame war here, but I had decided to 
invest some time with FreeBASIC when the site went down. I thought perhaps that 
was an early portent that I had picked the "wrong" compiler. I see that Black 
Annex is probably written with QB64 
(http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033318/black-annex-is-the-best-qbasic-game-youve-ever-seen.html).

Does anyone have any experience or tips working with the DOS version of 
FreeBASIC in FreeDOS that they'd like to share?

If not, thanks for humoring me this far in the thread.

Sincerely,
Abe

> On Jun 30, 2016, at 6:03 PM, Rugxulo  wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
>> On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>> 
>> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
>> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?
> 
> I'm not in the loop and haven't heard anything privately, but I know
> that I browsed there in the past week with no problems. Everything is
> still chugging along, AFAIK. So no, it's not anywhere near being
> abandoned. (IIRC, the project has been constantly improving since
> 2004.)
> 
> The most recent release was five months ago (which, all things
> considered, is quite a short gap, we don't need new releases every
> week). It's already been mirrored to iBiblio for us:
> 
> http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/basic/freebasic/1.05.0/
> 
> Anything in particular you were looking for?
> 


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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Rugxulo]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 6:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
>
> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

I'm not in the loop and haven't heard anything privately, but I know
that I browsed there in the past week with no problems. Everything is
still chugging along, AFAIK. So no, it's not anywhere near being
abandoned. (IIRC, the project has been constantly improving since
2004.)

The most recent release was five months ago (which, all things
considered, is quite a short gap, we don't need new releases every
week). It's already been mirrored to iBiblio for us:

http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/devel/basic/freebasic/1.05.0/

Anything in particular you were looking for?

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Re: [Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[dmccunney]

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 7:52 AM, Abe Mishler  wrote:
> Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net)
> has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

The Sourceforge back end is still up, and claims the last code update
was 4 days ago.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fbc/

I suspect a DNS error preventing resolution of the freebasic.net URL.

> Thanks,
> Abe
__
Dennis

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[Freedos-user] FreeBASIC status?

[Abe Mishler]

Does anyone know the state of FreeBASIC? The site (http://freebasic.net) 
has been down for at least 2 days now. Has the project been shuttered?

Thanks,
Abe

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