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From: jdt@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP (Dave Tenny)
Newsgroups: net.micro.amiga
Subject: Followup:  Aztec - good, bad, help.
Message-ID: <296@bucsb.bu.edu.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 22-May-86 07:49:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: bucsb.296
Posted: Thu May 22 07:49:46 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 25-May-86 17:46:21 EDT
Organization: Boston Univ Comp. Sci.
Lines: 59


Here is a followup on the article I submitted as
AZTEC, good, bad, HELP.

The news is mostly good.

If you are porting large amounts of code from Lattice to Aztec,
you might find the following useful:

  1.) ALWAYS use the +L (32bit int) option of the compiler,
      and link with the 32 bit libraries.  This is what
      was causing most of the problems for me.
      If you are not explicitly calling Intuition/AmigaDOS routines
      you can probably get away without the +L option.

  2.) Beware playing around with BOOL objects.  I never proved to
      my satisfaction that this was causing problems, but the following
      suspicious situation exists:

         in exec/types.h:
                   typedef short BOOL ;
                   #define TRUE 1L
                   #define FALSE 0L

  3.) I still believe the librarian is not trustworthy.
      I have examples where a linked module works with loose
      object code, but fails when the object code was placed in a
      library with the REPLACE option and subsequently re-linked.

  4.) I believe that the librarian -T option fails for RAM: libraries
      because of an intuition/AmigaDOS bug, and not a LB bug.
      Hopefully fixed in next intuition release.


I finally got my favorite TERMINAL program working, as well as 3 or 4
other tools I can't live without using the above guidelines.
I had to keep the source loose, and repeat LN's until I had a 
control file for the '-f' option of LN which had no unresolved externs.

I still believe that, provided the librarian utility is made worthwhile,
that Aztec should distribute the ORD utility with the developers
package.  Only when both these things are done will I find the
librarian usable.

Having linked some tools successfully now, a typical (I'm happy to report)
code comparison is:

  my terminal program:   Lattice -> 39420 bytes,   Manx -> 18480 bytes.

Many other tools were reduced in size by 50-70 percent!

There are still some port problems I haven't traced,
but I now feel good enough about the Aztec development package
to recommend it.  

Good job Aztec!

   Jeffrey D. Tenny