Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.csd.uwm.edu!bionet!apple!bridge2!csi!nsc!voder!tolerant!bruce From: bruce@tolerant.UUCP (Bruce Hochuli) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Use UNIX for MSDOS development? Message-ID: <5778@tolerant.UUCP> Date: 1 Sep 89 20:58:35 GMT References: <21714@cup.portal.com: <683@cbnewsi.ATT.COM> <578@fylz.UUCP> Reply-To: bruce@handel.Tolerant.COM.UUCP (Bruce Hochuli) Organization: Tolerant Software Inc., San Jose CA Lines: 51 In article <578@fylz.UUCP: fyl@fylz.UUCP (Phil Hughes) writes: :In article <683@cbnewsi.ATT.COM>, plb@cbnewsi.ATT.COM (peter.l.berghold) writes: :> From article <21714@cup.portal.com>, by cliffhanger@cup.portal.com (Cliff C Heyer): :> > Wondered if it's advisable to develop :> > MS DOS applications (in C) using UNIX : :> I do this sort of thing all the time. Since I want to be able to :> use UNIX's SCCS stuff, etc. as well as share code with folks I prefer to. :> I still, however, have to download all the sources to the PC and compile it :> there as I don't have any cross compilers for MSDOS. : :I have been doing the same thing. :The UNIX tools sure make a difference. I can't imagine having :to do development under DOS. I have been doing development under :system V on a UNIX system, using sdb for debugging and then, once :things seem ok, just writing the stuff out to floppy and loading :and compiling under DOS. I have been using Turbo C 1.5 and have :had virtually no portability problems. I used to have the same philosophy for development and sould still use it today for certain circumstances. The last major development environment that I set up was for 12 386 clones running Xenix with the mandate to cross development for DOS and Xenix. Worked fine. All you have to do to cross- develop is to set the DOS flag for the compiler and the linker. For smaller developments or in situations where multitasking is not a big win, I will pick DOS every time even though, I too, love the UNIX tools. 1.) You can buy all of the UNIX tools for DOS cheaply. I have the Polyshell stuff and it works great. They, and other, can supply SCCS, AWK, and all of the normal stuff you find on UNIX. 2.) The debuggers available under DOS are a ton better. 3.) Nroff/Troff sucks. It is a pain to switch environments for documentation. 4.) There is a lot more software in general that is available for the DOS world to make life easier. 5.) Compatability gets weird when dealing with Xenix. Some pieces of hardware and lots of networking schemes just don't work without heroics. If you just HAVE to have multitasking, you can experiment with DOS in a Xenix window and see if this works for you.