I see that it has been almost exactly one year since I last posted to this blog. That is far too long to go without some sort of update. So what is happening in the world of Open Watcom? There actually isn't much to report. The project has been almost as quiet as my blog. There have been a number of minor improvements added to the code base, however, and thus I'm planning to organize a release of Open Watcom 2.0 in a few months. I want to get the changes into the general distribution. I also, quite frankly, want to let the world know that Open Watcom is still alive.
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12 comments:
I think that without a 64 bit version, Ope Watcom will become as relevant as 16 bit compilers are today. I want to use it, but I am held back by the thought that anything I write will become similarly redundant.
I can understand your concerns. Your choice of words is interesting, though. For some people 16 bit compilers are still relevant today. I imagine 32 bit compilers will remain useful to some for many years to come as well.
That said it would certainly be nice if Open Watcom supported 64 bit targets. To make that happen we just a few contributors with the necessary skills and time.
Another thing to keep in mind... depending on the kind of programs you write it is possible, even likely, that a majority of your code will be entirely independent of the natural bit size of the underlying machine. Thus the 32/64 bit question may not be as significant as it at first appears.
Actually I would be using it for an operating system project. Visual C is too geared towards Windows applications, and I detest Linux.
We use Open Watcom for Windows projects in 32-bit mode, which is still commonly used. We are glad to see that Open Watcom isn't "dead"! Keep up the good work!
Trouble is that with more than 4Gb of memory in my computer, and in most people's computer before too long, the proposed operating system will not be 32 bit.
I'm a little confused about the use of Watcom compiled project on 64 bit Win7 computers. I've been unable to use applications compiled with wcc386 in the binnt folder. Windows tells me it can't run them, that I need a 64 bit application.
Am I using an old compiler? Are there other options I need to flag for the output? These files run great on my 32 bit Win XP system.
--ckg, you might post specifics about the problems you are having on the Open Watcom newsgroups. I run Open Watcom compiled 32 bit programs on my Windows 7, 64 bit OS with no problems. However, the 64 bit operating system can't run 16 bit executables. Are you sure you are using wcc386 and not wcc (the 16 bit compiler)?
Leslie, 32-bit operating systems can access more than 4GB of memory, using things like PAE.
However, 32-bit user space applications can only address 4GB of memory each. This is not a problem for most apps yet, but it might become one in the foreseeable future.
I'm wondering who is still working on Open Watcom? I looked up the site today because for the first time in years, I needed a native win32 app, and was surprised to see that not even a minor release has happened since I left.
Given that adding a backend to a compiler is not a trivial task, I'm not sure if it is feasible with OW's current resources to support 64-bit.
I think the main reason Open Watcom isn't used half as much as it should be is the reluctance to put the project on something like SourceForge and really involve the community. Or even, and I have mentioned this before, change the source repo from Perforce to something more accessible to the community like SVN, GIT or Mercurial. Things like GIT have really taken off in the past few years and anyone can create a GITHub account for free and it's simple to maintain.
It seems a shame that the overall programming community has let OW fall into it's own niche of obscurity but either way it needs to get back out there. I recommend OW to everyone who asks me "Where can I find a decent compiler?". I think the way to do that would be to involve the community a little more.
Wim,
It is true that development on Open Watcom has slowed considerably over the last year or two. This is because several key contributors have, for various reasons, either left or become inactive. As a result the next release (2.0) has been slow in coming.
fragsax,
I certainly agree that more community involvement would help Open Watcom. I'm sorry to say that under the current circumstances the project's long term future isn't particularly bright.
We are using Perforce for version control for two main reasons. The first is historical. Perforce was used by Scitech when they did the initial work on Open Watcom. Also Perforce is a nice system even if unfamiliar to many open source developers.
The second reason is political. Perforce currently pays for the server that hosts Open Watcom. They like supporting open source projects that might increase the visibility of their product. Switching to some other VCS would also require us to break our relationship with Perforce and set up a new location for Open Watcom to live.
Moving Open Watcom wouldn't be impossible but it would be a lot of work. Considering how limited our development resources are, I don't see such a move happening anytime soon. For example, if I ever get more time I'd rather write code!
Hi folks.
The page of www.openwatcom.org isn't working... any news about that?
www.openwatcom.org is up again. Sorry about any inconvenience.
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