E-waste
- Posted by SDPringle Apr 17, 2013
- 6690 views
This was essential to working in a DOS environment in which malloc doesn't always return addresses as a multiple of 8.
We have align4 code as part of managed memory. That should have taken care of this.
Ah but I have always said the *default* should be what will work on the greatest number of systems. Though you are right, it should have taken care of things the distributor forgot and we released something that needed Win2k or newer to run.
Can you identify when align4 support was removed? I just checked trunk and it looks like it's still in there.
Well, what I meant to say is that it isn't default and I think it is a bad thing that it isn't the default. Support was never removed AFAIK but what I know is seldom up to date about EUPHORIA. I have not really looked at the build process lately. I have become busy with other things.
I have more rewarding things to do than program for free right now. Think of this as a good thing. I think people would rather buy a new computer than pay a little bit to port 4.0 code to 3.1 code (which is far more feasible than porting 4.0 to DOS) and so, I only get on my soap box here these days.
As for free developers, they will normally want things to work on their computer and probably not care if it doesn't work on an outdated OS and they will want to use new features. I don't blame them.
The last time I tested it worked on Windows 98 but that might have changed. It would take some time to get up and running one of these old computers to test and debug things. I don't think there was any thing wrong with Euphoria 3.1. If you are using DOS one can continue using that version. There is no reason to throw an old computer away until it dies.
I don't know whether there are any known bugs in 3.1. The problem is a program targeted to DOS may not run on Windows XP (old), or Vista (also old but not so much) or probably anything thereafter. At that point they can use an emulator while they port it or have one of us help them.
Shawn Pringle
