Getting ready to program in C with GCC on RISC OS

FORTRAN

I recently had a quick attempt at getting the FORTRAN cross-compiler built alongside gcc in GCCSDK (hoping to port LAPACK) but stumbled very early and didn’t have time to investigate.

llvm in autobuilder doesn’t build

I think a lot of things no longer build off-the-peg in autobuilder. It needs some TLC. A start would be to take copies of the currently-used externals so that when they disappear from the source, we still have something that works.

I stumbled across the DDE Pascal a while back somewhere. 26 bit I believe. Such a shame it was dropped.

I only tried to use it back in the era of Turbo Pascal, and my experience was very bad. It was slow, syntax and semantic checking of questionable quality (typical bad error reporting of early compilers) and only supported original Wirth standard Pascal. There is a reason why all “useful” Pascal dialects extended on that! And while it was running as a part of the DDE in theory, in practice it was hard-to-impossible to interwork it with either C or Assembler code.

It is best forgotten.

I only tried to use it back in the era of Turbo Pascal

Ditto. The best thing I ever did at college was to look around the filesystem and discover TurboC (and copy it on to floppy disc). :-)

in practice it was hard-to-impossible to interwork it with either C or Assembler code

It was possible. I created a small program written in C, Pascal, and assembler. Mostly for the sake of doing it.
But, yes, I would agree that…

It is best forgotten.

:-)

Thanks for pointing out ARMforth32! I hadn’t found that one.

Quite nice. I prefer RiscLua6. If I didn’t have a copy I’d swear there was some sort of Mandela effect regarding it.

Presumably in the alternate reality Gavin posted a link for RiscLua6 instead of RiscLua5 and RiscLua7 although he does comment on the differences which amount to 6 & 7 differing in the use of the !SharedLibs for v6 cos it’s dynamically linked.

I forget if i tried it on the Pi0 or Pi2 but i couldn’t get FORTRAN friends g77 to work.

XAMOS BASIC seems to work fine on Pi2. Its on riscosports

Presumably in the alternate reality Gavin posted a link…

I also have Risclua 7 NEON.

@ David Feugey,
In what way is Charm broken?

In what way is Charm broken?

The canonical Charm website http://charm.qu-bit.co.uk/ is no longer active.

I don’t know if it is still available somewhere.

I don’t know if it is still available somewhere.

Charm V2.6.6 is here – see ‘Install’.

P.S. And it works on the RPi3B+.

Re1; Lua. I quickly set up my Pi to check what I have. Apparently I have RLua6, RLua6 NEON, RLua6 source, RLua7 NEON etc.

In what way is Charm broken?

While it was working, I remember of hard crashes when trying to recompile it.
Not 100% sure anyway.

In what way is Charm broken?

While it was working, I remember of hard crashes when trying to recompile it.
Not 100% sure anyway.

Other than that the little time I’ve had to play with it, it seems to work okay.

Hum, I’ll check again :)

Looking back over something, I came across Steve Pampling’s post about keyboard control.

So, 22 years on and we have some limited shortcuts, we don’t have keypress mouse control.
22 years. Why the delay?

Four thoughts come to mind.

1. This probably won’t work with a fair few apps that trap the cursor keys for their own mouse control (OpenVector, for example).
2. Which means the only sensible way to do this is a helper task which will claim the keypress if nothing does so first. And since it’s a helper app, it won’t be a part of the Wimp.
3. A week? A week? I could probably do it in a day. Others already have – like the Keyrat module used on the Bush boxen.
4. I don’t consider pushing the mouse around the screen to be “keyboard control”. At the very least I would expect:
   • A way to switch tasks (an add-on provides Alt-Tab functions)
   • A way to highlight and activate icons in a window (and this is the point where it all goes horribly wrong as a lot of icons are placed in the order they were added, often not a sensible order for stepping through ☺).
     Some sort of implementation of this might exist in the guise of the NC utilities.
   • A way to open and navigate menus.
   • Ways to move and resize windows.

When the keyboard can do that, then we have keyboard control.
And no, I have no idea how to implement that without clashing with existing keyboard behaviours. Maybe we ought to ask nemo, he probably did it two decades ago… ;-)

This probably won’t work with a fair few apps that trap the cursor keys for their own mouse control (OpenVector, for example).

No idea, I modified things to make desktop stuff work while I was playing with filer. Of course unless that stuff is the active task…

Which means the only sensible way to do this is a helper task which will claim the keypress if nothing does so first. And since it’s a helper app, it won’t be a part of the Wimp.

I’d really rather see it in the OS rather a bolt-on/crowbar in.
I was thinking it needed to be somewhere that is more regularly active. Wimp/switcher?

A week? A week? I could probably do it in a day. Others already have – like the Keyrat module used on the Bush boxen.

Implement vs. implement and test?

Need sleep, long day at GBBF and a post working imbibe. Repeat tomorrow and Friday and Saturday, then takedown days Sun, Mon, Tue…

Maybe we ought to ask nemo, he probably did it two decades ago… ;-)

Possibly, but without access the source at he probably did so with a hack module rather a neat/tidy bit of OS code.

Of course unless that stuff is the active task… […] I’d really rather see it in the OS rather a bolt-on/crowbar in.

There lies the problem. Yes, it would make more sense/consistency to have such control as a part of the Wimp, but unless it’s going to lay claim to an entire class of keypresses (like cursor-or-Enter-while-holding-Alt), it will run into the problem of prescience – does any given app respond to mouse presses itself?

Implement vs. implement and test?

It’s 2019, Steve. These days people follow the mantra of the agile waterfall devops. Or in English, one is supposed to write any old rubbish and release it and promise bug fixes and updates for about as long as it takes before new shiny-shiny comes and captures the imagination.

rather a neat/tidy bit of OS code.

Oooh! :-)
OS code, I’d agree.
Neat/tidy? He’d probably disagree. Especially if we bring in some of the changes in the other branch as evidence…

GBBF

Funny. I looked at who was posting and thought, I bet I know what those letters stand for.
I just hope it won’t need to renamed for next year. GEBF doesn’t quite sound the same, does it?

Have a nice time.

It’s 2019, Steve. These days people follow the mantra of the agile waterfall devops. Or in English, one is supposed to write any old rubbish and release it and promise bug fixes and updates for about as long as it takes before new shiny-shiny comes and captures the imagination.

What my father used to describe a sloppy short-termism.

Especially if we bring in some of the changes in the other branch as evidence…

Not knowing the code under the bonnet, nor the actual user end¹ I’d say that stuff is probably just evidence of differing opinions/approaches.

¹ Since Select didn’t work on my new machine I never bought it.

Maybe we ought to ask nemo, he probably did it two decades ago… ;-)

Presses Shift-Logo

And which SHIFT+LOGO+(key) combination loads this fine extension into the RISC OS source? ;)

@DavidS I’m sorry to hear about your stroke, and I wish you the very best in recovery.

Thanks for the link to your website. I’ve just started looking around, and I’m enjoying this one in particular:

https://asmfun.riscos.fr/docs/misc/RO4Me.txt

These days, I’ve been installing everything I can find on RISC OS software first on VirtualAcorn, and then recently on my ARMX6.

I really enjoy using RISC OS, and it’s something of a bummer to drop out of it to do something on the PC. It just reminds me how much I appreciate RISC OS.

Take installing/uninstalling programs: The last few days, I’ve probably tested out more than 100 applications, and since there’s no need to install anything, you can do this in a couple of days.

Had this been on the PC, with regular install/uninstall, it would probably been more like two weeks.

Moving back to topic: I agree with you regarding responsible handling of resource allocation/deallocation.

I prefer to avoid having to deal with these things explicitly by using a language with support for higher-level abstractions, such as C++.

Using modern C++, you rarely if ever need to manually handle resources or use raw pointers. There are containers like std::vector, and if you need to manage a resource, there are smart pointers that handles this for you.

Oh, and thanks for giving extASM and extAOF a home. :)

https://asmfun.riscos.fr/down.html

Think about how opaque C looks to someone that has only ever programmed in LOGO, [etc]

I think one of the main things that prepared me for C was college inflicting TurboPascal on us. Now, Pascal is a pretty awful language (thankfully TP has enough extensions to make it usable), but it does introduce the concept of linking together modules (in a far more coherent way than BASIC’s LIBRARY), of having a certain degree of freedom in writing code (a line ends with a semicolon, not a newline), of using a compiler, of having the core language be very minimal and everything else provided as callable functions in libraries, and of thinking about programming in a slightly different way than one would be used to if they only knew things like BASIC.

C is similar, only with even more punctuation strewn all over the place (and C++ extracts the urine!). Where a language like BASIC has a rich set of statements to do things (OPENIN, PRINT, MOD, MODE, etc etc), C has… more or less variable handling, structures, loops, and functions and that’s it. Everything else is an external library that you link into the final executable. while many people use the same libraries, it does actually provide a great deal of flexibility.

Because everything is provided as “a function”, there’s logically no difference between an “internal” function and one that you’ve written as a part of the program. printf() and init_screen() are equals. This can’t be said for PRINT and PROCinit_screen.
Because of this, it’s perfectly possible to replace “standard” functions just by writing an alternative and using that instead. This is how I made Borland BGI calls work on RISC OS. I simply created functions that took the same inputs as the BGI ones, and had them do the appropriate RISC OS graphics operations instead. On a PC, the BGI library got linked in. On RISC OS, my clone was used instead. Both worked fine.
You can’t do anything like that in BASIC.

I started to learn C in 1995

Me too, give or take a year. I might still prototype something in BASIC if I’m not sure of how to approach a problem and want to play around trying all sorts of things. This is because BASIC is “instant gratification”, but its lack of structures quickly makes things become a bit of a mess.
My language of choice, otherwise, is C. I used to write in assembler, and I still do from time to time just for the sake of it. But I would never plan any sizable project in assembler. There’s just too much mindless crap to have to take care of that is better left to a compiler to worry about. It’s 2021, what’s on the stack is not my effing problem! ;-)

I also find I’m a lot more productive in C because one line of C can easily be several lines of assembler, and using snprintf() to construct a string in memory? That would be just painful to do it the tedious and long-winded way.

6502 Assembly, 680×0 Assembly, and ARM Assembly.

What, no x86 assembly? ;-)

For me, I started with BBC BASIC. Did a little bit of 6502 (mainly abusing &EA to work around annoying copy protection). From there I progressed to BBC BASIC V and ARM assembly. ARM was nice. It was also amusing to be able to have a machine fast enough to do stuff with Econet in real time. Like, you know, listen on the line for logins to pull out the name and password, all conveniently sent in the clear. ;-)

From there, TurboPascal and then TurboC. Dabbled with those. I wrote a terminal as the one I had was crap and didn’t do ANSI colour correctly. It needed a bit of x86 code inlined in order to bypass the BIOS serial routines that were slow. I didn’t need much assembler but saw enough x86 to think it was the most horrid thing I’d ever seen. Okay, that’s a bit of hyperbole – I’ve seen half-dead old people puking blood into a bucket that I’m holding for them (cancer can be unimaginably evil) and not even x86 gets close to that level of “ohmygod”. But it tries. ;-)
Then Norcroft C and RISC OS. I avoided it for a while. I read the book describing RISC_OSLib while waiting in the gynae waiting room (there for mom, not me!) and felt that RISC_OSLib was an inconsistent and confusing mess. A little bit later I happened upon DeskLib, and never looked back.

I wanted a blog system on my site, to be better than that mess of simple HTML files that I had been using (updating the calendar was becoming a problem). The thing was, I didn’t have access to any SQL database at the time, so it would need to be done as a flat file setup. Which… didn’t seem to exist. So I taught myself PHP and wrote my own. It’s probably really crap, but it works, and seems pretty solid. When my site got hacked (a long time ago, a different person running the server), it appears to have been a validation failure of something SQL on a different site, but once you’re in and have access to the underlying filesystem, it’s game over for the entire host.

And… that’s about it. I never bothered to learn JavaScript. In the days when I was interested, it was The Browser Wars and changing far too much. If I needed any script, it was just as easy to find an example and copy it. It’s a lot like C, so understandable enough.

It is all about how you view the world and what you have been exposed to.

I’d prefer to view the world from afar. Like, “a little white dot in the sky” style of afar. Because I’ve been exposed to far too much madness in my 47 years, much of it happening in the last decade.
If this is really reality, I’d like an alternative option.

And, this isn’t Aldershot, so I’ll end it there. It’s also gone sunset and too many mosquitos, evil little bastards managing to sting me through my clothes. That’s not playing fair. :(

So C does have its place

What, an abusive relationship?

The moral here, boys and girls, is that just because you can do dumb things in C…doesn’t mean you should do dumb things in C.

;-)

Please edit the output out of your post David, it is too long.