SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that Open Watcom 1.2 has been released and is now available for download from its website. This release contains a large number of new features, product enhancements and several fixes designed to bring Open Watcom to a higher level of quality and compatibility. SciTech, the official maintainers of the Open Watcom project, have also announced the availability of an updated Open Watcom CD, complete with SciTech’s installer for DOS, OS/2, and windows. Support for the update will be handled exclusively through
the Open Watcom website.
SciTech Software Announces Release of Open Watcom 1.2
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Back in the old days the Watcom compiler was praised: “No other compiler creates such lightning fast executable” – and it also supported (thanks to DOS4GW) protected mode out of the box.
But is there still a need for it – or is the GCC enough “for everyone” ?
I personally think that a little variety is a good thing. Open Watcom will meet needs that gcc doesn’t.
Good old days, indeed.
Is there any place for Open Watcom on the side GCC ? I don’t know for everybody, but for myself, if OW support popular C++ extensions like properties and closure pointers (which are not by GCC), I’ll switch on the spot.
But is openWatcom based on the code of Watcom proper?
awesome. im so glad to see watcom living on with the help of scitechsoft. its a fantastic compiler suite.
yes, openwatcom is based on the watcom 11 base.
c/c++/fortran compilers.
support for dos16, dos32, win32, win16, os2, ntlm, pharlap etc.
its really kickass.
…and wasn’t that impressed. A neat little C program I wrote compiles to an 64K executable with gcc and 29K under lcc-win32. Open Watcom was in a similar ballpark with Borland’s 5.5 (about 90K). And I didn’t turn any optimizers on (on any of the compilers). Oh: the editor sucks, too. Nah – give me lcc-win32 and UltraEdit any time.
regards,
Stephan
did you think, to oh, strip the executable of all its default debugging symbols?
openwatcom is very impressive and very indepth.
also if yuou like ultraedit, check out <a href=”http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html“>scite!
screen shot <a href=”http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEImage.html“>here
runs on win32, unix etc. its very cool. and much much faster than ultraedit.
To all I could find, yes. I must agree though, that Open watcom plays in a different league when it comes to managing the project. That can become very ugly with the other compilers I mentioned. I also like the help index. But I still have not been able to find out what lcc-win32 does to make an executable so friggin’ compact…
regards,
Stephan
I’ve been using djgpp for some time, but now I can use a much more powerful and expecially flexible dev tool. I’m looking forward to learn all the ins and outs of OpenWatcom.
I plan on using it for system programming (kernel, drivers, etc).
Question: can I distribute/sell my binaries created with OW, or do I have to make them opensource?
“Question: can I distribute/sell my binaries created with OW, or do I have to make them opensource?”
No need to open source your code due to any restriction imposed on it from the use of Open Watcom. Read the Open Watcom License if you have additional questions about its use.
http://www.openwatcom.org/download/down_source.shtml
Cheers,
AndrewB
“Question: can I distribute/sell my binaries created with OW, or do I have to make them opensource?”
OMG, is there *any* existing compiler with such restrictions ? Pretty ugly …
OMG, is there *any* existing compiler with such restrictions ? Pretty ugly …
Yes, there is :o(
I have seen this really kewl forth compiler, it was rather fast, Then I noticed that they forbid you from releasing your binaries without the sourcecode.
“…and wasn’t that impressed. A neat little C program I wrote compiles to an 64K executable with gcc and 29K under lcc-win32. Open Watcom was in a similar ballpark with Borland’s 5.5 (about 90K). And I didn’t turn any optimizers on (on any of the compilers).”
Well, comparisons are worthless if not tested using each others best attributes (optimizations) as nobody, anyway, will seriously release a final build on a default compiler settings.
“Oh: the editor sucks, too. Nah – give me lcc-win32 and UltraEdit any time.”
Well it’s like judging a movie in a theatre by how comfortable is your seat. It’s purely accessory. If you like UltraEdit, then why not using it with the straight compiler ? (I personally prefer Visual Studio for editor, but that’s an whole other debate 🙂
“Yes, there is :o(
I have seen this really kewl forth compiler, it was rather fast, Then I noticed that they forbid you from releasing your binaries without the sourcecode.”
Is it even legal ? I means, is it legally possible, for example, to force a writer to release all his side notes with his book if he use an open-source wordprocessor ?
Or to force an artist to give his drawing for free if using a specific opensource drawing program ?
I don’t think this is something legally acceptable. But I’m not a lawyer, so my opinion doesn’t worth much … 🙁
“But I still have not been able to find out what lcc-win32 does to make an executable so friggin’ compact…”
By default Open Watcom does not compile to use the DLL C runtime library but rather the static C runtime library. Hence it is a lot bigger. I bet lcc is using the Microsoft C runtime library on Windows which is always a DLL, and hence much smaller. Try using the Open Watcom DLL runtime library and you will get a much, much smaller exe file.
If you do care about the size of the executeable file, check out the Open Watcom newsgroups. Some of the folks on there are anal about code size and have been figuring out what compiler switches to use to produce the smallest exe files with Open Watcom (and making changes to the compiler as well). The results may surprise you ;-).
“Is it even legal ? I means, is it legally possible, for example, to force a writer to release all his side notes with his book if he use an open-source wordprocessor ?”
Yes, it is legal to do that and the one compiler I know of that does this is Cygwin. To build any program with Cygwin you need to link with the GNU GPL’ed startup files (static link always; they cannot be dynamically linked) and hence Cygwin specifically requires you to release all your code under an Open Source release. If you don’t like that, you have to pay big $$$ to purchase the commercial version.
Of course none of this is relevant for Open Watcom because you can build as many commercial programs as you want 😉 The current license agreement is not a clear as we would like, and we are real close to V2.0 of the license which clears up a lot of these issues. The end result though is that Open Watcom was *intended* from the start to allow commercial development. After all it came about because Sybase wanted to provide a future looking solution for their existing customers when they end-of-lifed the compiler, rather than leaving them all in the lurch.
Allways loved this compiler, specially the speed it takes to recompile a huge project.. it’s amazing that gcc still takes years to compile compared to it, even on computers 50 times faster than what I used WatcomC++ on. It may not be the best in compatibility and features, but then again not all programmers make intensive use of them.
My wishlist is mainly linux support using the native runtime&libraries, but i guess it wont happen anytime soon.
Also, I wish following development of it was easier, but they seem to just use a newsgroup and not mailing lists that can be searched online and all that.. i’m sure that if the development process looked less “closed” (which i’m sure it’s not), they’d gain more programmers.
Cheers!
The biggest reason I use Watcom is for debugging my Assembly language projects. My project is in its early stages and it is much easier to target DOS Protected than Win32. The only other free “graphical” debugger I tried was DDD and it was too slow and bloated to use.
“Yes, it is legal to do that and the one compiler I know of that does this is Cygwin. To build any program with Cygwin you need to link with the GNU GPL’ed startup files (static link always; they cannot be dynamically linked) and hence Cygwin specifically requires you to release all your code under an Open Source release.”
This is actually two different beasts : I’m talking about the pure binary produced by my compiled source, not about linked libraries.
So, for exemple, if I build my own OS and provide my own startup files to be linked with my binary, then I don’t have to release any code, even tho it’s compiled with cygwin.
Right ?
What is the status of the C++ used? Does it now support namespaces and newer C++ constructs, stl?
Which is faster?
—
Does anyone know whether the Watcom Vx*Rexx GUI builder for OS/2 will ever be resurrected as part of this project?
Of course none of this is relevant for Open Watcom because you can build as many commercial programs as you want 😉
Yipeeee!!!
You guys deserve my $10.
“If you do care about the size of the executeable file, check out the Open Watcom newsgroups. Some of the folks on there are anal about code size and have been figuring out what compiler switches to use to produce the smallest exe files with Open Watcom (and making changes to the compiler as well). The results may surprise you ;-).”
I’ll check them out, since I am somewhat anal on code size, too (I still want the prog to run on Atari ST, too ;-). Thanks.
regards,
Stephan
To put it as the great Homer J. Simpson would:
“MMMHHHHH – Rexx!” 😉
reagrds,
Stephan
I always loved Watcom compiler as well. Purchased 10.6 and 11.0 versions (student price of course:) and glad to see that it hasn’t disappeared into the annals of MS competition
This morning I was really tempted to donate some money into the project, then I decided to first download and see if the new version fixed the most annoying problem that prevented me using Watcom as my permanent compiler again: (lack of) locality of “for loop” variables. C’mon this has been part of C++ standard since when, 1999? Back to Dev-C++ until then…
Yes, I ran into this problem, too, and I found that a simple hack for it was to enclose the for() statement in brackets as in:
from: for (int i=0; …) …
to: { for (int i=0; …) … }
Not pretty, but it works.
“So, for exemple, if I build my own OS and provide my own startup files to be linked with my binary, then I don’t have to release any code, even tho it’s compiled with cygwin. Right?”
Correct. But then you are not really using Cygwin but really just using GCC. You can do a cross compiler port of GCC for your OS using your runtime library (or even GLIBC with your own startup files) that would not need apps to be Open Source, and you can then run your compiler on Windows using Cygwin. It is only native Win32 binaries built with Cygwin that must be Open Source.
No, SciTech does not have the VX-REXX source code (and Sybase may not know where it is either).
Shame. Now that DrDialog and VisproRexx are no longer supported (at least the core products), I always hoped that Vx could make a come-back and provide OS/2 with a much-need GUI builder.
Thanks for the update, nonetheless