Compile like it's 1992 • Hacker News Board

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#21

Post by ghshephard » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 7:18 AM UTC

zura wrote: post #19

gavinpc wrote: post #5

I remember getting the Borland C compiler as a ten or eleven year old and thinking, twenty megabytes! What in the world could they need twenty megabytes for? That was like, my entire hard drive. N.B. you have a typo Z:/> mount c ~/systen/c

Honestly, I still think that 12MB for a system like Borland C is overkill.

  00:18 shephard-osx2:bin shephard$ ls -lh /usr/bin/clang
  -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  admin    35M Jul 15 16:27 /usr/bin/clang

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#22

Post by pervycreeper » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 7:59 AM UTC

orionblastar wrote: post #8

ekianjo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only the engine is open, though, not the data files. EDIT: And it's not "public domain" either. Look at the license.doc in the github repository, there are tons of restrictions as to what you can do with the code. https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d

It is like when Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 2.0 and MS-Word 1.1C not open sourced but some kind of commercial license that limits use and derivatives. It kind of reminds me of that old Borland Museum that had the old Turbo languages for free download. http://edn.embarcadero.com/museum Sadly they stopped releasing old versions in 2005. I had hoped there to be a Delphi 1.0 release. I actually got Delp…

I was under the impression that all the 3d id engines (except Rage) have been released in some form under GPL compatible licenses.

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#23

Post by fit2rule » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 8:09 AM UTC

zura wrote: post #19

gavinpc wrote: post #5

I remember getting the Borland C compiler as a ten or eleven year old and thinking, twenty megabytes! What in the world could they need twenty megabytes for? That was like, my entire hard drive. N.B. you have a typo Z:/> mount c ~/systen/c

Honestly, I still think that 12MB for a system like Borland C is overkill.

I've got my Atari Portfolio still loaded up with Turbo C .. 384k. Its enough for everyone. ;)

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#24

Post by haberman » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 8:25 AM UTC

In a similar vein, here is Lua 5.2 being compiled with Turbo C 1.0 (impressive that software written in 2013 compiles unmodified on a 1990 compiler!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#25

Post by self » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 8:43 AM UTC

ghshephard wrote: post #21

zura wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I still think that 12MB for a system like Borland C is overkill.

00:18 shephard-osx2:bin shephard$ ls -lh /usr/bin/clang -rwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 35M Jul 15 16:27 /usr/bin/clang

    $ ls -lh ~/p9/386/bin/6c
    -rwxr-xr-x  1 fn  staff   326K May  6  2011 /Users/fn/p9/386/bin/6c
    $

-- Plan 9's C compiler for the Intel 386 platform. It doesn't use shared libraries, either.

The linker is 141KB, and assembler (6a) is 123KB.

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#26

Post by simias » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 9:12 AM UTC

fabien_sanglard wrote: post #20

frozenport wrote: post #13

Will it build with a modern compiler?

Nope, the code is mean to run in Real-Mode, a mode where registers are 16 bits and memory is severely segmented. No to mention the direct access to the VGA which modern Operating System forbid.

Well, that's true but it could still technically "build", I suppose, what you describe are runtime issues, not build issues. I assume there are other reasons that prevent building with modern compilers?

I would assume that the first problem would be to find a modern compiler that could target 16bit DOS in the first place...

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#27

Post by ggambetta » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 9:38 AM UTC

zak_mc_kracken wrote: post #4

Have to hand it out to Fabien, he's not just an amazing developer with baffling skills to understand code and graphical routines, his dedication to understanding old games of yore is second to none. Nice job, Fabien!

Agreed, Fabien's work is fantastic :)

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#28

Post by pavlov » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 10:13 AM UTC

russtrotter wrote: post #12

Does anyone else find it sorta ironically odd that one of the masterminds behind this great stuff is now a .... gasp Facebook ... employee?? my heart kinda aches.

Is a Nazi-shooting game somehow more culturally valuable than a social network?

It's all entertainment, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#29

Post by pavlov » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 10:16 AM UTC

simias wrote: post #26

fabien_sanglard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, the code is mean to run in Real-Mode, a mode where registers are 16 bits and memory is severely segmented. No to mention the direct access to the VGA which modern Operating System forbid.

Well, that's true but it could still technically "build", I suppose, what you describe are runtime issues, not build issues. I assume there are other reasons that prevent building with modern compilers? I would assume that the first problem would be to find a modern compiler that could target 16bit DOS in the first place...

Looks like the code has inline x86 assembly in the Borland format, so that would probably need to be converted for a different C compiler. There are likely to be other, not so obvious dependencies on compiler-specific features.

Re: Compile like it's 1992

#30

Post by octo_t » Mon, Aug 11, 2014, 10:22 AM UTC

haberman wrote: post #24

In a similar vein, here is Lua 5.2 being compiled with Turbo C 1.0 (impressive that software written in 2013 compiles unmodified on a 1990 compiler!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jvLY5pUwic

Thats what happens when you used a language which has an ISO or similar standard.