Hello All.

I want to do some code refactoring to remove dangerous coding approaches. Like memset() instead of new(), printf(), etc.

Which compilers are still in use to build GoldED+ and for which systems?

Vitaliy

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20220504
* Origin: Aurora, Colorado (1:104/117)

On 2023-02-06 21:10:08, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to All:

I want to do some code refactoring to remove dangerous coding
approaches. Like memset() instead of new(), printf(), etc.

Which compilers are still in use to build GoldED+ and for which systems?

If you're taking over development then it's really up to you what you want to support.

Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS users will have modern versions of GCC and Clang available.

Ideally the Windows version should be built with a version of MSVC that has full STL support. This would exclude now-ancient MSVC versions like Visual Studio 6.0 from 1998.

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good "middle ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which still runs well under Windows 10 & 11.

OTOH it would be preferable if a free compiler could be used in Windows. Recently I learned that in 2020 Embarcadero released a fork of Dev-C++ that provides GCC 9.2 and supports C++11:

https://github.com/Embarcadero/Dev-Cpp/releases

OS/2 I'm not really sure about, but I know there are modern versions of GCC available from the Netlabs repos.

I was going to suggest DOS/DPMI support should be dropped, but I see GCC 10.2.0 was ported to DJGPP in 2020, so that's probably useable. Though I doubt many people would complain if DOS support was removed from future GoldED versions.

Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well it supports STL or C++11. It may be good enough.
The great thing about OpenWatcom 2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from Linux.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20220504
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Hello andrew,

Tuesday February 07 2023, andrew clarke wrote to Vitaliy Aksyonov:

[...]

Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well it supports
STL or C++11. It may be good enough. The great thing about OpenWatcom
2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from Linux.

I remember you told me you discovered that OpenWatcom 2 had no full support of C11. So, the fact that this compiler supports C++11 is also questionable.

Michael

... node (at) f1042 (dot) ru
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: Moscow, Russia (2:5020/1042)

Hello andrew.

07 Feb 23 15:41, you wrote to me:

I want to do some code refactoring to remove dangerous coding
approaches. Like memset() instead of new(), printf(), etc.

Which compilers are still in use to build GoldED+ and for which
systems?

If you're taking over development then it's really up to you what you
want to support.

I'd use gcc under linux for main development. Also have working windows dev environment with Visual Studio 2022.

Linux, FreeBSD or MacOS users will have modern versions of GCC and
Clang available.

That make sense. I don't see any issues for modern systems.

Ideally the Windows version should be built with a version of MSVC
that has full STL support. This would exclude now-ancient MSVC
versions like Visual Studio 6.0 from 1998.

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce
binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good "middle
ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which still runs well
under Windows 10 & 11.

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013. Would it produce binaries for Windows XP?

OTOH it would be preferable if a free compiler could be used in
Windows. Recently I learned that in 2020 Embarcadero released a fork
of Dev-C++ that provides GCC 9.2 and supports C++11:

MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons why can't it be used.

https://github.com/Embarcadero/Dev-Cpp/releases

OS/2 I'm not really sure about, but I know there are modern versions
of GCC available from the Netlabs repos.

I was going to suggest DOS/DPMI support should be dropped, but I see
GCC 10.2.0 was ported to DJGPP in 2020, so that's probably useable.
Though I doubt many people would complain if DOS support was removed
from future GoldED versions.

That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is mostly retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers and old OSes.

Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well it supports
STL or C++11. It may be good enough. The great thing about OpenWatcom
2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from Linux.

I like the idea of using cross-compiling. In this case there is no need to setup many different systems. Even if they work on virtual machine.

From what I've read about OpenWatcom - they don't really conform fully to even C++98 and I'm not sure about C++11 support either. Need to try that.

Even refactor code to use C++98 would be a huge improvement. It's full of old pure C approaches.

Vitaliy

... Mo? ?a?a ?o?opu?a: ?e ??a?o??c? c ?e??a?o???u ?????u.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20220504
* Origin: Aurora, Colorado (1:104/117)

On 2023-02-07 16:51:34, Michael Dukelsky (2:5020/1042) wrote to andrew clarke:

I remember you told me you discovered that OpenWatcom 2 had no full support of C11. So, the fact that this compiler supports C++11 is also questionable.

OpenWatcom 2.0 has at least basic STL support, predating C++11. This is still a big improvement over "ancient" C++.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230205
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

On 2023-02-07 07:22:08, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce
binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good "middle
ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which still runs well
under Windows 10 & 11.

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013. Would
it produce binaries for Windows XP?

I'm not sure, but if your C++ code builds with a modern version of MSVC then it will probably build with VS2012, so anyone with that compiler should still be able to build a version that will run in XP unless you're using a new C++ feature from C++11 or C++20 that VS2012 doesn't support.

But for GoldED it shouldn't really be necessary to refactor the code using C++'s increasingly estoric features. Instead, just using features from the STL would be a big improvement.

OTOH it would be preferable if a free compiler could be used in
Windows. Recently I learned that in 2020 Embarcadero released a
fork of Dev-C++ that provides GCC 9.2 and supports C++11:

MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons why can't it be used.

I'd forgotten about the community edition.

I suppose you could use that, though the modern versions of VS are kind of scary. I mean a 10+ GB download just to compile "Hello world" in C is a bit excessive. The download is bigger than any regular Linux distro. Just for the IDE and C/C++ compiler.

It's strange Microsoft never released a free version of MSVC with just the compiler, header files and libraries but without the IDE. Borland did that in 2000, 23 years ago! I think it even had STL support.

I was going to suggest DOS/DPMI support should be dropped, but I
see GCC 10.2.0 was ported to DJGPP in 2020, so that's probably
useable. Though I doubt many people would complain if DOS support
was removed from future GoldED versions.

That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is mostly
retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers and old OSes.

Well they can still run the older retro versions.

The question really comes down to whether you and other devs are hamstrung by having to still support DOS. Of course if it turns out to be easy to keep supporting it, eg. by cross-compiling with OpenWatcom, then that's good news.

Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a
recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well it
supports STL or C++11. It may be good enough. The great thing about
OpenWatcom 2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a
cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from
Linux.

I like the idea of using cross-compiling. In this case there is no need
to setup many different systems. Even if they work on virtual machine.

It does simplify things. It's also really fast.

Though another option for cross-compiling (Linux to Windows, and also MacOS to Windows) is mingw-w64.

From what I've read about OpenWatcom - they don't really conform fully
to even C++98 and I'm not sure about C++11 support either. Need to try that.

Even refactor code to use C++98 would be a huge improvement. It's full
of old pure C approaches.

Yep, modern C/C++ in OW2.0 is a bit hit-and-miss, though there is at least some STL support available, ie. strings, vectors, stacks, etc. It's worth experimenting with it just to learn what its limits are, with respect to which C++ features you'd like to use. It may be good enough.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230205
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Hello, andrew!

Wednesday February 08 2023 06:52, from andrew clarke -> Vitaliy Aksyonov, in URL @OFGHIUrl:

so anyone with that compiler should still be able to build a version
that will run in XP unless you're using a new C++ feature from C++11
or C++20 that VS2012 doesn't support.

I really appreciate Vitaliy's intent/effort to replace malloc() allocations together with the memset/memcpy hacks with the standard C++ constructor workflow but here is the thing. GoldED codebase is based off some "C with classes" version of C++ and those memset/memcpy hacks were the optimization you can apply in pre-c++11 era without the rvalue move semantics.

But for GoldED it shouldn't really be necessary to refactor the code
using C++'s increasingly estoric features. Instead, just using
features from the STL would be a big improvement.

I was saying in that Russian speaking ru.golded echo-conference, that just replacing C-style data structures like single/doubly linked lists, hashes, dynamic arrays, char* strings and friends with std::vector, std::list, std::string, you name it will trash about 20% of the GoldED code. But still, pre-c++11 language has no RVO, so you will have to return objects via the pointer/reference passing as a function argument most of the time, then not even defined memory model! though, GoldED is a single-threaded application, so nobody cares.

To sum up my brain farts, if it were say Husky project with plain-C there would be no question to continue refactoring in old plain C, but here with the OOP C++ style code we would prefer to get at least to C++11 level, otherwise just go ahead and fix delete[]/delete stuff and call it a day.

Best Regards, Nil
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5
* Origin: -=NIL BBS=- (1:16/101)

�ਢ��, andrew!

08 Feb 23 06:52, �� ��ᠫ(�) ���:

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce
binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good
"middle ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which
still runs well under Windows 10 & 11.

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013.
Would it produce binaries for Windows XP?

I'm not sure, but if your C++ code builds with a modern version of
MSVC then it will probably build with VS2012, so anyone with that
compiler should still be able to build a version that will run in XP unless you're using a new C++ feature from C++11 or C++20 that VS2012 doesn't support.

That's my plan. Switch to STL where possible and stay compatible with older compilers.

But for GoldED it shouldn't really be necessary to refactor the code
using C++'s increasingly estoric features. Instead, just using
features from the STL would be a big improvement.

Totally agree. Code will be much safer and easier to support.

OTOH it would be preferable if a free compiler could be used in
Windows. Recently I learned that in 2020 Embarcadero released a
fork of Dev-C++ that provides GCC 9.2 and supports C++11:

MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons
why can't it be used.

I'd forgotten about the community edition.

But it's used for windows builds. Need to be supported too. Windows is not very developer-friendly system. I like Unix-style systems much more for development.

I suppose you could use that, though the modern versions of VS are
kind of scary. I mean a 10+ GB download just to compile "Hello world"
in C is a bit excessive. The download is bigger than any regular Linux distro. Just for the IDE and C/C++ compiler.

That is true. I don't know what do they put there. Maybe crypto miner? ;)

It's strange Microsoft never released a free version of MSVC with just
the compiler, header files and libraries but without the IDE. Borland
did that in 2000, 23 years ago! I think it even had STL support.

Who knows, why? Probably there is some secret optimizations. Or maybe code is so ugly, that they shy to show it to wide public. :D BTW, their STL implementation was very bad performance wise when they introduced VS 2015. They focused on following standard even with performance penalty. Our company stayed on STLPort for long time because of that.

I was going to suggest DOS/DPMI support should be dropped, but I
see GCC 10.2.0 was ported to DJGPP in 2020, so that's probably
useable. Though I doubt many people would complain if DOS
support was removed from future GoldED versions.

There are people who may build it on DOS. I'll take that help.

That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is
mostly retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers
and old OSes.

Well they can still run the older retro versions.

That is true. But what if they want to use new features or fix some nasty bugs? The more master evolves - the harder would be to backport such changes. From other side - that decision will be made sooner or later. Then nice features like smart pointers or other may be used.

The question really comes down to whether you and other devs are
hamstrung by having to still support DOS. Of course if it turns out to
be easy to keep supporting it, eg. by cross-compiling with OpenWatcom, then that's good news.

I'll try. I don't want to break it yet. First touches will be just to make safe changes and learn the code. It's big!

Another option for Windows, OS/2 & DOS may be to build with a
recent version of OpenWatcom 2.0, though I don't know how well
it supports STL or C++11. It may be good enough. The great thing
about OpenWatcom 2.0 is can run under Linux, and it's also a
cross-compiler, so you can build DOS, Windows & OS/2 apps from
Linux.

I like the idea of using cross-compiling. In this case there is
no need to setup many different systems. Even if they work on
virtual machine.

It does simplify things. It's also really fast.
Though another option for cross-compiling (Linux to Windows, and also MacOS to Windows) is mingw-w64.

Maybe some day... I'm not ready to setup that evnironment yet.

From what I've read about OpenWatcom - they don't really conform
fully to even C++98 and I'm not sure about C++11 support either.
Need to try that.

Even refactor code to use C++98 would be a huge improvement. It's
full of old pure C approaches.

Yep, modern C/C++ in OW2.0 is a bit hit-and-miss, though there is at
least some STL support available, ie. strings, vectors, stacks, etc.
It's worth experimenting with it just to learn what its limits are,
with respect to which C++ features you'd like to use. It may be good enough.

Totally argee!

Best regards,
Vitaliy Aksyonov.

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20220504
* Origin: Aurora, Colorado (1:104/117)

On 2023-02-07 14:09:10, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:

MS provides free VS community edition. I don't see any reasons
why can't it be used.

I'd forgotten about the community edition.

But it's used for windows builds. Need to be supported too. Windows is
not very developer-friendly system. I like Unix-style systems much more for development.

I had a quick look at Visual Studio 2022 Community today. I was pleasantly surprised that a Microsoft account login was no longer mandatory to use the VS Community IDE. On first launch you can now click "Skip for now" at the login screen. I don't know yet if the IDE's idea of "for now" means "for 30 days" or "in perpetuity" but it's a nice change.

I assume that was done on purpose, since the IDE's restrictions don't apply if all you need are the MSVC command-line tools, eg. to build GoldED.

Then if you still want an IDE you can use VSCode instead, which doesn't require a Microsoft login. In many ways VSCode is superior anyway, except maybe if you're doing WinForms development in C#.

I suppose you could use that, though the modern versions of VS are
kind of scary. I mean a 10+ GB download just to compile "Hello
world" in C is a bit excessive. The download is bigger than any
regular Linux distro. Just for the IDE and C/C++ compiler.

That is true. I don't know what do they put there. Maybe crypto miner?
;)

Ah, of course. :)

Incredibly the full offline download of VS 2022 Community (en-US language only) totals 40 GB.

Installing basic C++ and C# development tools "only" requires about 12 GB though.

It's strange Microsoft never released a free version of MSVC with
just the compiler, header files and libraries but without the IDE.
Borland did that in 2000, 23 years ago! I think it even had STL
support.

Who knows, why? Probably there is some secret optimizations. Or maybe
code is so ugly, that they shy to show it to wide public. :D

Well I wasn't suggesting they open-source it. Just release a free version of VS Community but with only the command-line tools. Or just make it an option to not install the IDE when you install VS Community.

Back in 2005 Microsoft released the Windows Server 2003 DDK Tools for free. That was essentially a full version of MSVC from around 2003, minus the IDE. However the C & C++ standard libraries were also deliberately excluded, so the only apps you could realistically build were those that exclusively used Win32 API calls. It was really intended for driver development, though that also meant if you were an OEM you couldn't easily build software with it to configure your own drivers. Curiously, they still have it available for download.

BTW, their STL implementation was very bad performance wise when they introduced VS2015. They focused on following standard even with performance penalty. Our company stayed on STLPort for long time
because of that.

It's good you had an alternative.

I don't know if it would help the STL but the Windows port of Clang might have better performance than the MSVC compiler. Microsoft even include Clang as an optional feature with VS2022, though you can also download the latest version from GitHub.

That's a good question. Main concern here is that FidoNet is
mostly retro hobby and people may want to run it on old computers
and old OSes.

Well they can still run the older retro versions.

That is true. But what if they want to use new features or fix some
nasty bugs? The more master evolves - the harder would be to backport
such changes. From other side - that decision will be made sooner or later. Then nice features like smart pointers or other may be used.

I don't know. Backporting fixes typically isn't that difficult, provided you have a period-correct C/C++ compiler. (This is why I'm not so fond of relying on MSVC for the Windows version, since they keep removing their older versions from their web site. You used to be able to freely download Visual Studio Express 2008, which runs like lightning on a modern PC with an SSD.)

Most of the truly nasty bugs in Fido software that's still being used were fixed years ago with Y2K patches. Software like GoldED may have plenty of issues but none of them are serious. At least not to my knowledge. There may be a few Year 2038 bugs in Fidonet software in the future but I don't anticipate too many problems.

Retro folks still wanting to run BBS software under DOS typically want to run old versions of things and won't be very interested in new features.

Then there are retro folks (like us) who prefer to use Linux, MacOS or FreeBSD terminals, and the latest version of GoldED or whatever.

Of course, there is some overlap. :)

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230205
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

andrew clarke wrote to Vitaliy Aksyonov <=-

Then there are retro folks (like us) who prefer to use Linux, MacOS or FreeBSD terminals, and the latest version of GoldED or whatever.

It's always nice to have a familiar face on modern hardware and software.
For me, I have been using GoldEd for so long that my fingers are "hardwired" for its keyboard shortcuts. I have a few minor issues with GED (like
personal mail scan not working for some odd reason) but it's more of an annoyance than a dealbreaker. I'm happy GED is still functional all of
these decades later.

-- Sean

... My other computer doesn't compute.
--- MMail/FreeBSD
* Origin: Outpost BBS * Johnson City, TN (1:18/200)

On 2023-02-07 07:22:08, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce
binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good "middle
ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which still runs well
under Windows 10 & 11.

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013. Would
it produce binaries for Windows XP?

For the record the freeware Visual C++ 2005 Express is still available to download from Microsoft:

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=57034

or

https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/1/A91D6B2B-A798-47DF-9C7E-A97854B7DD18/VC.iso

From my limited testing it will install and run under Windows 11 provided you install the .NET 3.5 Framework first.

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230221
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

Hello andrew.

21 Mar 23 06:36, you wrote to me:

From memory the very recent versions of MSVC no longer produce
binaries that will run under Windows XP. I've found a good
"middle ground" is something like Visual Studio 2012, which
still runs well under Windows 10 & 11.

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013.
Would it produce binaries for Windows XP?

For the record the freeware Visual C++ 2005 Express is still available
to download from Microsoft:

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=57034

or

https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/1/A91D6B2B-A798-47DF-9C7E- A97854B7DD18/VC.iso

From my limited testing it will install and run under Windows 11
provided you install the .NET 3.5 Framework first.

Great. Thanks. Downloaded it. Will try to build current master later. I have Windows 10 on my computer.

Vitaliy

--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20230221
* Origin: Aurora, Colorado (1:104/117)

On 2023-03-21 06:36:40, andrew clarke (3:633/267) wrote to Vitaliy Aksyonov:

Visual Studio 2012 is not available anymore. Oldest one is 2013.
Would it produce binaries for Windows XP?

For the record the freeware Visual C++ 2005 Express is still available
to download from Microsoft:

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=57034

or

https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/1/A91D6B2B-A798-47DF-9C7E-A9 7854B7DD18/VC.iso

From my limited testing it will install and run under Windows 11
provided you install the .NET 3.5 Framework first.

Visual Studio 2008 Express is also still available:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/E/8/E/E8EEB394-7F42-4963-A2D8-29559B738298/VS2008ExpressWithSP1ENUX1504728.iso

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230221
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)

On 2023-03-20 14:39:16, Vitaliy Aksyonov (1:104/117) wrote to andrew clarke:

For the record the freeware Visual C++ 2005 Express is still
available to download from Microsoft:

https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=57034

or

https://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/1/A91D6B2B-A798-47DF-9C
7E- A97854B7DD18/VC.iso

From my limited testing it will install and run under Windows 11
provided you install the .NET 3.5 Framework first.

Great. Thanks. Downloaded it. Will try to build current master later. I have Windows 10 on my computer.

Visual Studio 2008 Express (see my last message) might be a better choice with recent Windows versions.

Though Visual C++ 2005 Express does give you the option to only install the command-line tools, which should be enough to build GoldED with nmake.

It's probably also possible to install both concurrently without breaking anything. :)

golded-plus/golded.sln is for Visual C++ 2005.

golded-plus/golded.mak is for Visual C++ 6.0 (1998) but should work with newer versions.

But I haven't tested either...

--- GoldED+/BSD 1.1.5-b20230221
* Origin: Blizzard of Ozz, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia (3:633/267)