Porting question

[TNG999]

Hi all,

First of all, I am NOT a programmer...  I'm mainly a Microsoft-product administrator...  did OS/2 back in the hey-day and Novell.

As far as porting applications from Windows...  is it easier to port and maintain individual applications and needed libraries or would it be easier to port and maintain to ODIN?

Thanks for any info.....

-m

[Dave Yeo]

Welcome TNG999,

Probably easier to port and maintain to Odin. Problem with Odin is not much has been done to it in quite a while. At one point it could run quite a few Win32 apps and things like Java and Adobe Acrobat were ported with it back in the day but MS has added lots of new API since.

[TNG999]

Ahh ok...  Yes, makes sense you'd have to keep up ODIN with new libraries. 

Wish I was a programmer so I could help with porting......    Anything a non-programmer can do to help?

Thanks!

-m

[Mentore]

Ahh ok...  Yes, makes sense you'd have to keep up ODIN with new libraries. 

Wish I was a programmer so I could help with porting......    Anything a non-programmer can do to help?

Thanks!

-m

Actually I think one of the biggest issues with Microsoft products is that most Windows programs are written in .NET.

.NET shares many similarities with the OS/2 SOM, from what I remember of the latter, but they have different dialects. What's worse is that .NET has become a full interface to the entire system, so porting an application would mean first of all porting all .NET to OS/2: and here comes the problem, since .NET is open source (and Linux has got it) but so big that we would require huge manpower to try and port it - then again, .NET is 64-bit aware, while OS/2 Kernel is not. This is just a quick handful of problems.

Mentore

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

Correct me if I'm wrong. Running an Win32 app on OS/2 with Odin, does not necesary means you are porting a Windows app to OS/2. For me it means you are running a Win32 binary that is being intepreted over OS/2 to run.

If a it is neded Windows application made in .Net to be ported to OS/2, it may be hard, the only way I know would be to porting first the Mono project, and later compiling the .Net application on OS/2. Currently we don't have Mono ported to OS/2.

If you want to port a different Windows application, that is not created in .Net, you should check the language and libraries that it uses. For example if it uses C and Qt5 and other libraries that we have ported to OS/2, that may be a good candidate to be ported.

But if you want to compile some little thing with OS/2, you may want to read this little article I wrote. "Compiling "OS/2 Presentation Manager Programming" Samples on 2016". You can compile a little test and then keep growing your knowledge from there.

Regards

[Dave Yeo]

Hi

Correct me if I'm wrong. Running an Win32 app on OS/2 with Odin, does not necesary means you are porting a Windows app to OS/2. For me it means you are running a Win32 binary that is being intepreted over OS/2 to run.

Hi Martin, a Win32 program can be recompiled and linked against Odin giving a native program. Bitwise and before that, Innotek, took that route for some versions of Acrobat, latest Java and Flash and likely others. I've never done it.

As for programs compiled with .NET, guess they'll be a deal breaker.

[TNG999]

Ahh yes Mono...

Is there a chromium browser port in progress somewhere still?  I thought I read about it but haven't found a release for it.

I think that's what I need the most to make OS/2 an almost daily-driver.

Thanks...

-m

[Martin Iturbide]

...a Win32 program can be recompiled and linked against Odin giving a native program. Bitwise and before that, Innotek, took that route for some versions of Acrobat, latest Java and Flash and likely others. I've never done it.

Thanks for the correction Dave. I forgot about that.

[Rich Walsh]

Is there a chromium browser port in progress somewhere still?

That's whal the QT5, QT6, and Dooble threads are all about. Use AN Package Manager (ANPM) to install the official (and pretty usable) versions of QT5 and Dooble. The QT6 port is coming along but definitely still of alpha-quality/stability.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi TNG999

Is there a chromium browser port in progress somewhere still?  I thought I read about it but haven't found a release for it.

We have the preview release of "dooble" running on Qt5 on the RPM Repository. You can install it with ANPM or by running "yum install dooble". If you don't see it, you may need to change your platform to "pentium 4" on ANPM.  Give it a try.


Regards

[TNG999]

Ok got it.  QT WebEngine is based on Chromium.

I'll try out Dooble. Thanks.

-m

[TNG999]

If there is an application out there that is available on windows, Linux and macosx, can they recompile for os/2 or is it a complicated thing?

[Dave Yeo]

If there is an application out there that is available on windows, Linux and macosx, can they recompile for os/2 or is it a complicated thing?

Probably the simplest are QT based apps, either Qt4 or Qt5. Qt6 isn't quite ready. There's a list of ported apps here, http://trac.netlabs.org/qtapps along with needed diffs by the looks of it.
Note that there doesn't seem to be a porting Qt apps guide for OS/2, the bit on the above page is out of date but generally they build the same on all systems besides where and how the libraries are installed. I was going to link to https://www.qt-apps.org/ but it currently giving a 509 (bandwidth exceeded) error.
You were wondering how else to help. Being new to this would be a good time to write up a porting Qt apps guide, what needs installed, how to apply a diif and eventually produce one and how to build, which is the simple part once you have all the prerequisites. Luckily YUM/RPM has made installing prerequisites simple.
You could start a new thread, something like porting my first Qt app.

[TNG999]

Hi I'd love to... Is this something a non programmer can do?  I'm more of a administrator then a programmer.

[Dave Yeo]

Hi I'd love to... Is this something a non programmer can do?  I'm more of a administrator then a programmer.

Simple programs will just build and work (might need installing). There's learning involved but it is a simple way to start and learn about build systems and eventually simple fixes.