OT:[Fwd: [announce.openwatcom] Open Watcom 1.2 Now Available]

SDL Development
1

I apologize in advance to anyone bothered by this posting. The Watcom
compilers were widely used for game programming on both DOS and Windows
and having them freely available may make life easier for many people
looking for a decent free Windows development environment.

	Bob Pendleton-----Forwarded Message-----

From: stevew at scitechsoft.com
To: announce.openwatcom at list.scitechsoft.com
Subject: [announce.openwatcom] Open Watcom 1.2 Now Available
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 11:53:00 -0800

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Open Watcom 1.2 Now Available

Open Watcom 1.2 has been released. This update includes a number of
eagerly anticipated fixes and enhancements and can be downloaded, free
of charge, from the Open Watcom web site at:

http://www.openwatcom.org/

Open Watcom can also be purchased on CD, which includes all of the
source code, as well as SciTechs installers for OS/2 and Windows.
Support for the update will be handled exclusively through the Open
Watcom newsgroup and Bugzilla.

This latest release marks the second official update to Open Watcom
since the projects inception, and sets the stage for future
development. SciTech has stated in the past that the goal of the
project is to offer regular stable product releases on a more frequent
basis and looks to the growing community of developers to assist in
making this goal a reality. To further drive the project, SciTech is
currently funding a feasibility study on porting Open Watcom for use on
Linux, with the goal of being able to provide an alternate compiler
option as well as a commercial quality debugger for Linux and BSD
developers.

What’s new in Open Watcom 1.2

* The C compiler now performs stricter checking on function

prototypes and pointer operations. This may lead to previously
undiagnosed warnings/errors appearing when compiling incorrect or
ambiguous code.
* The C compiler diagnostic messages have been improved to print
more information, making it easier to isolate the problem.
* A new warning (W130) has been added to the C compiler to diagnose
possible precision loss on assignment operations. This warning is never
on by default and must be enabled through '#pragma enable_message(130)'
or ‘-wce=130’ switch.
* Support for C99 style variable argument macros (and VA_ARGS)
has been added to the C and C++ compilers.
* Added support for the func symbol (name of the current
function) which is equivalent to the already existing FUNCTION
symbol.
* Better C99 style support for “long long” type is now available in
the C and C++ compilers. LL, ULL and LLU suffixes are recognized for
constants. “long long int” is now also recognized.
* Added C99 style *LLONG_MIN/MAX defines to limits.h.
* The C++ compiler has been fixed to properly accept source files
where a template was the last item in a namespace or an external
linkage.
* Several new -adxx options have been added to the C and C++
compilers to support automatic generation of ‘make’ style dependency
files.
* The C compiler has been fixed to correctly diagnose illegal union
assignments.
* The C compiler now issues warnings on operations involving
pointers to different but compatible unions.
* The C and C++ compilers now ensure word alignment of wide
character string literals to satisfy Win32 API restrictions.
* The UNIX macro is now supported in C and C++ compilers, wmake
and wasm. It is currently defined for QNX and Linux targets.
* Default windowing support has been re-enabled for Win16 and
Win386 runtime libraries.
* Since default windowing is no longer supported on most platforms,
the Programmer’s Guide and IDE tutorial have been updated to reflect
that fact.
* The Win32 GUI tools now support the Windows XP look and feel.
* AutoCAD and MFC targets have been removed from the IDE, the bw
switch (default windowing) is no longer available in the IDE for OS/2
and Win32 targets.
* Manual for the CauseWay DOS extender has been added.
* The dmpobj tool has been added. This utility dumps the contents
of OMF object files and can be useful to developers.
* Several system definitions have been added to wlink: os2_pm (16-
bit OS/2 Presentation Manager executable), os2_dll (16-bit OS/2 DLL)
and os2v2_dll (32-bit OS/2 DLL).
* The linker has been fixed to read “AR” style archives produced by
third party tools.
* The linker has been fixed to prevent crashes when linking with
COFF files providing uninitialised COMDAT entries
* Several linker crashes related to ELF object files and
executables have been resolved.
* Updated wlink to call wlib with the -c (case sensitive) option
when creating import libraries. This fixes problems with DLLs that
export symbols differring only in case.
* The C runtime library has been optimized to produce smaller
executables.
* The printf() function now supports the “ll” format specifier for
"long long" integers.
* The printf() function has been enhanced to support %b format
specifier for bitfields.
* Execution order of C library termination routines is now better
defined to prevent instances where temporary files created through
mktemp() could be left behind.
* [OS/2 32-bit] To prevent crashes, termination code is not run if
second instance of a DLL failed to load due to single DGROUP.
* [OS/2 32-bit] The __grow_handles() function was incorrectly
adding requested handles to existing limit instead of setting the limit
to n.
* [OS/2 32-bit] Fixed a problem with _STACKLOW in multithreaded
programs and DLLs. This prevents crashes where Fortran DLLs would run
out of stack.
* [OS/2 16-bit] Fixed default math exception handler which wasn’t
popping the FP status word off the stack and would therefore crash on
exit.
* The Win32 Image Editor has been enhanced with drag-and-drop
support.
* The IDE has been fixed to properly handle mixed case filenames.
* The Microsoft compatibility tools (NMAKE, CL) have been fixed to
better handle command line arguments.
* The Dialog Editor (wde) has been fixed to prevent occasional DDE
related crashes when run from inside the Resource Editor (wre).
* The ‘Change font’ option no longer crashes the GUI debugger
(wdw).
* On OS/2, wdw now intercepts the F10 key instead of passing it on
to the system.
* The code generator now deletes object files if it was
interrupted.
* Previously zero-length invalid object files could be left behind,
interfering with make operation.
* The wasm assembler has been enhanced to generate file dependency
information usable by wmake.
* Numerous minor fixes have been made to wasm.
* Compatibility with MASM 6 has been improved with wasm.
* Support for sysenter and sysexit instructions has been added to
wasm and wdis.
* Disassembly of xchg and bound instructions has been fixed in wdi
(corrected order of operands).
* Several previously undocumented wmake directives have been
documented.
* A -sn (‘noisy’) option has been added to wmake to print all
commands that wmake executes, including silent ones.
* The w32api project has been updated to the latest version.
* The os2api project has been enhanced - added multimedia headers
and libraries and numerous fixes have been made to the header files.
* The debugger now supports the F7 key as a shortcut for “run to
cursor”. This is consistent with CodeView.
* New internal variable dbg$ntid (next thread id) has been added to
the debugger. This permits automated iteration of all threads.
* The wsample tool has been updated to dynamically allocate storage
for command line, where previously the command line length was limited
to 128 characters.
* The FORTRAN compiler has been changed to preserve case of symbols
with linkage other than FORTRAN. This is especially helpful when
calling OS API functions and using case sensitive link step (now
default).

About Open Watcom

The Watcom C/C++ and Fortran products are the first mass market,
proprietary compilers to be Open Sourced and, weighing in at nearly
three million lines of source code, represent one of the largest pools
of commercial source code of any type ever released under an Open
Source license. Sybase, Inc. developed the original Watcom code and
SciTech Software, Inc. is the official maintainer of the project. The
Open Watcom project has stirred tremendous interest among developers
worldwide. Thousands have already joined the Open Watcom community at
www.openwatcom.org in order to use Open Watcom and contribute to its
further development. Watcom supports software development in Windows,
DOS, OS/2, Netware, QNX, and other operating systems (a Linux version
of Open Watcom is planned). The Open Watcom web address is
http://www.openwatcom.org.

About SciTech

SciTech Software, Inc. is a leading supplier of PC graphics utilities,
drivers, and tools for the embedded, industrial and enterprise markets.
SciTech’s products include, SciTech SNAP Graphics, a fully accelerated
binary compatible graphic device driver solution, SciTech GLDirect, an
OpenGL to Direct3D driver and SciTech MGL, a professional graphics
library used to develop some of today’s most popular software programs.
SciTech products support the Windows, Linux, OS/2, DOS, QNX, and SMX
operating systems. SciTech is privately held and the company’s web
address is http://www.scitechsoft.com

Steve Wendt, QA Dept.
SciTech Software, Inc.

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