Messages

16

Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023

« on: January 08, 2023, 03:51:22 pm »

Having the libcn in a lesser state than EMX is... well, as a developer I understand that there's so much to do and so little time, so applying YAGNI principle, if these calls were not required when the libs were leverage for a given port (say firefox), it's understandable they aren't at the same quality.

However, when it's time to port, what should be the target now? It should be libcn. But... I understand it can't be used for console apps? Nonsense.

Perhaps the priority of the development community (not putting the burden on one dev, but more in a collegial way - if we want to conquer the hill, we need a strategy) should be to give some love to that runtime while moving forward porting stuff. But where to start? Is what's missing documented at all, or is it the knowledge of a few devs?

Back to vim.  I'm using the OW version and it's pretty good. I was using it as a porting exercise, knowing that if I'd checkout the commit before the os2 support was removed, it _should_ build. It did. But as you confirmed, console appears broken in many ways. I wanted to port console apps, so unless the libcn is fixed I can't... and no problem to debug and eventually contribute to libcn, yet back to my original comments, the setup time is somewhat time-consuming and error-prone.

Still, I want to give credits to the folks at BWW who documented a lot. Now it needs to reach next level. One toolset for porting, one toolset for legacy (PM and DOS or win32s ports) and reduced friction setup for both. I'm probably oversimplifying, still I think a hobbyist purchasing ArcaOS should be able to code in less than an hour, that's not really the case right now.

17

Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023

« on: January 07, 2023, 10:18:59 pm »

I've been stuck in isolation for a week during which I've been toying with my ArcaOS setup (still have to try out the HOBLink files to see if it works on my end, but I digress) and that week has been fairly educational:

- there's a fair amount of source code of OS/2 software from the "golden age" (1993-2000) period. A lot of these came from the GNU/Linux ecosystem and were ported to OS/2 at the time using EMX. If I understand correctly the current state of things, to refresh these usually means *reverting* many of the former port to the then-incomplete EMX port of the application and actually re-do the port to the current BWW libc. "libc retargeting", if you wish. If you are curious, my goal was to have a baseline VIM working with bww' libc and it built and linked, but something's broken at VIO level. My hope were high - and perhaps I was close to my target - but in the end it was a bitter experience.

- there's a fair amount of source code of Linux software that begs to be ported. The QT porting efforts does unlock many of such ports, yet depending on the runtime target of the Qt port itself (is it leveraging bww? libc? Odin32? EMX? Combo?), it can have a profound impact afterwards. I think Paul's approach of porting gcc and sticking to the GNU toolset is the right approach. I'm curious about how the graphics part is done though.

- What about OpenWatcom then? Well, to my understanding, it remains the tool of choice for device driver and OS/2-only development, when you wish to try Petzold's PM book samples or OS/2 Toolkit, porting Win16 code or code from the surprisingly active DOS community.

IMHO, the IBM C/Set|VAge should be considered legacy and worth installing on any developer machine for the debugging tools they provide and when that particular compiler is required. Otherwise, it's a dead end.

18

Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023

« on: January 07, 2023, 05:55:14 pm »

Most desperately so.

Should I use GCC (in absence of clang, it's to only sane choice) or OW? well it depends to who you talk. Many developers only swear by OpenWatcom which is an utterly confusing mess since a developer took on him the burden to revamp the stack with variable-to-absent consideration for testing on ArcaOS or OS/2 4.5 .

If one is to port an app... EMX? Klibc? BWW libc? It appears that bww is the only viable choice, but with all the references out there on the other previous iterations, it makes it still very confusing.

Once you decided the target libc, how to have the auto-tools and cmake recognize the ArcaOS SDK requirements (linker?!)

Each step in the way is a mix of forum or mailing list archives digging, archeaology and sweat. There's some fun in that, but it's not productive. And most hobbyist developers won't know where to look and they'll go back tinkering with their RPi instead. Much more developer friendly.

19

Applications / Re: Software Wishlist for 2023

« on: January 07, 2023, 05:27:58 pm »

Frankly (and I have all of Stevens' TCPIP books here) IPv6 couldn't be lower on my list. We're still on IP-beta (aka v4) in 2023 and the migration was supposed to be completed by 2010. Like FM radio, it's here to stay.

As a community, we need developers. People to back the work of Paul, David, the folks at BWW, etc. The very first thing new developers want is a friendly development environment.

On ArcaOS it is sort-of there. At least there's ANPM/yum for dependencies management. There should be a single 'awesome ArcaOS' git(Hub,lab) with everything you need to get up to speed with a tested stable development kit. That means OpenWatcom 1.9 and gccand all the environment scripts sorted out and standardized, a modern editor... and I know someone can take a few hours to set up by themselves. Bullshit. It's just yack shaving and non-productive. I want Suntan Special for developers.

Once that is in place, a developer community can actually get started to support ArcaNoae, bww and Paul on Qt6, blink/chromium, KDE apps (thanks qt6) and only then - maybe - gtk apps.

But I tell you the developer experience is currently very opaque, cumbersome and error-prone.

Since the most urgent need is on C/C++ side, I obviously wasn't talking about REXX development.

20

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 26, 2022, 04:13:15 pm »

Same error message about license violation. It _is_ for ecomstation.

Ivan you are my only hope! archive.org perhaps?

21

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 26, 2022, 04:09:58 pm »

@Doug,

This is from the WS_FTP.LOG in the archive you've uploaded. It appears it's an ecomstation-related build. I'll give it a shot anyway...


2001.07.02 11:09 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\100DPI.FNT <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 100DPI.FNT
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\DIVE.DL_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 DIVE.DL_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\FTP.EX_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 FTP.EX_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\FTP.HL_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 FTP.HL_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\KMF.KM_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 KMF.KM_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\MISC.FNT <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 MISC.FNT
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\MYSTART.SU <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 MYSTART.SU
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\MYSTART1.SU <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 MYSTART1.SU
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\TELNET.EX_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 TELNET.EX_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\TELNET.HL_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 TELNET.HL_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\TERMINAL.IN_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 TERMINAL.IN_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\XSET.EX_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 XSET.EX_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\XSETUP.HL_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 XSETUP.HL_
2001.07.02 11:10 B C:\Patrick\Business\Partners\Serenity Systems\Software\X11\Disk3\XSTARTUP.EX_ <-- HOB /pub/Von_HOB/serenity/X11/Disk3 XSTARTUP.EX_

22

Applications / Re: SSH - take the long way home

« on: December 26, 2022, 06:21:05 am »

Hmmm correct. with Xrdp it could perhaps work for graphical ! Great idea!

The SSH issue remains complete though. If anyone knows a simpler way for a great SSH experience with OS/2, I'm open to about any suggestion

23

Applications / SSH - take the long way home

« on: December 26, 2022, 03:11:38 am »

When you can't really SSH to the main server
'coz the OS2 term type isn't recognized
You take the long way home -
  you take the long way home

When you've tried and tried with the qputty
And seems like it won't be working eventually
You take the long way home
  you take the long way home

----

(I could have went on but I realize my Supertramp "filk" isn't really good and I really appreciate that song so, in respect to the authors, I'll stop there.)

When I reinstalled ArcaOS, I thought about using it as a decent terminal. I would ssh to my linux box and do what I mostly do during the day - use vim. My cheap 10 years old T420 would be recycled as decent terminal with WP51 to type prose, mutt for IMAP-based emails (yeah, old fashioned)... and X-Windows through SSH when I need to run some app from my Linux box.

Well. Turns out SSH-as-a-Linux-terminal is mostly broken. VIM is soo outdated isn't not even funny. Can't get any X-Server thing to work (so far). SSH works from a non-resizeable window (...) and the list of annoyance goes on and on and on. Mutt probably doesn't work, I just haven't tried - I'm at the point of almost giving up.

(Maybe I should use Windows. Yes, I know, I know - I really shouldn't say that.)
But let's try anyway. From within OS/2!

In my PC virtualization shoutout, VirtualBox releases on netlabs are mostly not working for me. While I appreciate the phenomenal work from BWW, Valery and friends... It's a good beta. Many test cases are not working (they know and documented it) and it's instabilities might be related - who knows.

Surpringly enough, the last Virtual PC from Connectix was remarkably stable to run Windows XP i386. Should you wish to ever take this route, make sure you clone the repo "https://github.com/faultlinehc/tlsonxp" and use the shared folders functionality to bring the files into the virtual machine and install modern TLS support otherwise you'll find Internet Explorer pretty useless on the modern web. With good reasons. Yes, it was always useless. Until you need to download "just one file" and you can't.

But, with functional TLS support, you can download Putty for i386.
And it works.
It just _fuckin_ works.
So I can ssh to my Linux box, from VirtualPC running under ArcaOS. But I can't do it natively (or barely, the terminal is all screwed up) nor through winos2 (needs win32s 1.30) nor DOS (needs watttcp to be ported to TCP/IP for DOS so that vtcpdos.sys kicks in)

But i _FINALLY_ have a working SSH... but I can't use it for X11.

There must be more. Folks, what do _you_ use?

24

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 25, 2022, 11:23:31 pm »

Merry Xmas Dave! Merry Xmas Ivan!

25

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 25, 2022, 11:18:23 pm »

Ah, and that's why then.

And the original HOBLink can't be found anywhere now. You are lucky to have that copy with you! It's precious now!

26

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 25, 2022, 10:51:03 pm »

I'm trying to get it to work in ArcaOS ivan! no luck yet!

27

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 25, 2022, 07:36:39 pm »

Dave,

After I started Hoblink I've add the same result as you. Same dialog. Unless the binary is patched to skip the check, we can't use it under ArcaOS.

Unless there's a way to have it think it's running under Warp 4 or eCS

28

Applications / Re: HOBLink and ArcaOS

« on: December 25, 2022, 07:17:48 pm »

Glenn,

I walked through your footsteps and had stopped, with the same result you got.
But I've went back to this. And went a little further with a successful install - that pops the license violation dialog (close, but no cigar!)

So here's how to do it:

- Get eComstation 1.1
- Start the HobX11 install. Make it fail. Don't close it.
- From eComstation 1.1 Disk 1, copy \os2\dll\securit2.dll to where you've installed HobLink
- Go back to the installer - it works now.

When prompted for a license, I filled bogus data and it's likely why its failing.
-

29

Web applications / Re: The MicroWeb DOS web browser

« on: December 20, 2022, 09:08:39 pm »

I' ve been hunting this SDK for a while and I'm happy to report that I've managed to install the long-forgotten TCPDOS 2.1.2 + Base CSP + Prog CSP. Oh yes indeed.

Installing the Prog CSP required some tinkering with the provided batch file - as elaborated this thing is, it failed to install the Prog CSP when I tried it. And kept failing for sufficiently iterations that I got annoyed and debugged the damn file.

The recipe:

1. On the installation media of IBM OS/2 LAN Server 4.0 Advanced from 1994, look for a TCPDOS folder. There's a BASE folder from where you can do a network install (faster than the tedious floppy image fun). Install the thing to a TCPDOS folder. Lo' and behol' - decomp.exe in under \bin.

2. Download the CSP files and install Base 1 and 2, then.... toy around with the prog csd. I _think_ the failing part was the few lines where it tries to create the folders. Somehow they were not created and decomp failed to extract.

I've attached the extracted files from the prog CSD and the precious decomp.exe for your pleasure.

I'm really looking forward to see if he (mTCP author) can make his sockets library talk to VDOSTCP through those libraries! I'll gladly assist!

30

Article Discussions / Re: IBM Systems Journal Magazine and OS/2

« on: November 08, 2022, 02:16:01 am »

Hi Martin,

IEEE Xplore can help there finding some:

OS/2:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?action=search&newsearch=true&matchBoolean=true&queryText=(%22Publication%20Title%22:IBM%20Systems%20Journal)%20AND%20(%22All%20Metadata%22:OS%2F2)

Workplace Model:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?action=search&newsearch=true&matchBoolean=true&queryText=(%22Publication%20Title%22:IBM%20Systems%20Journal)%20AND%20(%22All%20Metadata%22:Workplace%20Model)

REXX:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?action=search&newsearch=true&matchBoolean=true&queryText=(%22Publication%20Title%22:IBM%20Systems%20Journal)%20AND%20(%22All%20Metadata%22:REXX)

DSOM:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?action=search&newsearch=true&matchBoolean=true&queryText=(%22Publication%20Title%22:IBM%20Systems%20Journal)%20AND%20(%22All%20Metadata%22:DSOM)

OpenDoc:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?action=search&newsearch=true&matchBoolean=true&queryText=(%22Publication%20Title%22:IBM%20Systems%20Journal)%20AND%20(%22All%20Metadata%22:OpenDOC)

Hope this helps!