[Coco] 3rdPart Editor

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 12/17/18 11:23 AM, Bill Pierce via Coco wrote:

Bill, I don't think you understand...


That's strongly possible...



The makefiles present in the repo are NOT OS9 makefiles.

I would have thought some were.  If not, why are there  no OS9 valid makefiles?

Doing everything on a PC and them moving it to the COCO may sound like fun,

but what's the point?  If OS9 on a COCO is incapable of doing something as

simple as building a line oriented editor then what is it good for?  Hint: some of

us don't see the COCO as a game machine.  I have an Xbox for that.


They are for the make included in the Mercurial distro used to build the NitrOS9 repo on modern machines. None of the OS9 makes will work with those makefiles. In fact, the repo cannot be built at all under OS9.

That is also pretty sad.  I know it would take a while, but to not be able to do it

at all.....





I also think you're over-estimating make and what it does. Make does not produce anything. All make does is scan for a given filetype (defined in the makefile) and recursively calls the proper module until all files are done. Make has very little in "commands" as the flags used in the makefiles are generated elsewhere in "rules.mak" or other makefiles or defs files. The flags pace through make are usually being passed on to the designated C compiler module. The macros created in the makefiles determine what program make calls for what file extention.

I am well aware of what make does.  Been using for several decades now.  But my experience

was with the one that came with the C Compiler and we (at least I) now know it is totally

broken.  It was not issuing usable commands for the compiler and couldn't even handle

the typical "clean" which does nothing but delete a handful of files.  I will report back my

luck with the newer one.



Neither of the two makes for OS9 have extensive enough functionality to handle most of what's done in the repo (like ed).

Seriously?  All it has to do for "ed" is compile a small handful of .c files to .r files and

then compile the "main" file and link them.  Surely even the simplest version of make

could handle that.  I guess we'll see.




If you are having a problem building as simple, single C file, then I doubt make is the problem. You have probably not defined your build process in the makefile.

No, make was the problem.  We'll see if the other one is better  if not, I may have to look for a different
version (Minix maybe) and port it to OS9.





And I was wrong... the docs for make are NOT in the C compiler manual. In fact, make didn't come in the C compiler package as make will not work in OS9 L1 due to 64k memory limits. Make came with the Level 2 Developer's System. You'll find make's description in that manual.

I'll look for it but if others posting here are right, it won;t work anyway because it is bug ridden.




And, while I have people's attention, here's a few other things I  have run into since getting back into this.

OS9 DSAVE -- for random and unknown reasons tries to recursively create directories.

FORMAT (on the COCO)  I tried repeatedly to format my IDE disks.  I would type FORMAT /i0 answer
all the questions as they came up and after usually an hour or more it would hang during the
verify step.  Tried a number of disks and tried /i1 as well.  Then, one morning I decided to
give it one more shot but not wanting to sit there for an hour I used the form of the FORMAT
command where you provide all the options on the command line having to only answer yes/no
about it being a hard disk. Lo and behold, it worked.  That's how I  now have two disks /i0
and /i1 working on my COCO.  Makes a lot of stuff much faster.

Not sure what else I will find but I have to admit to being surprised that bugs this obvious
had never been run into by anyone else.



bill