From: quacci AT vera DOT com (jon)
Newsgroups: alt.msdos.programmer,comp.os.msdos.djgpp,rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: watcom vs DJGPP/Allegro
Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 19:54:43 GMT
Organization: Yale University
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Message-ID: <3380abad.22606009@news.cis.yale.edu>
References: <01bc6120$d9fcc380$82a42499 AT syntaxlogic DOT earthlink DOT net> <337b1557 DOT 3473841 AT linux DOT compd DOT com> <337E1DF5 DOT F38 AT primenet DOT com>
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To: djgpp AT delorie DOT com
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On 17 May 1997 13:58:03 -0700, "Smith A. Cat" <imbe AT primenet DOT com>
wrote:

>Rob W wrote:
>
>> I would be interested too, however I am using Watcom and can't use
>> Allegro.  Is DJGPP really as good as people have said!?  Last time I
>> looked I couldn't even get it installed properly.
>> 
>> (but then that could be me.)

DJGPP is great, and it really isn't so bad to install. It just appears
daunting at first- a familiar daunting if you ever work in unix, where
everything (like in a typical man entry) is phrased is a peculiarly
idomatic and obscenely complex way. But *really*, it isn't so bad,
particularly if you follow all the instructions on one of the
"user-friendly sites" that walks you through it step-by-step- best is
probably Brennans' site at:

http://www.rt66.com/~brennan/djgpp/

>I have been using watcom, and have been migrating to DJGPP/RSXNT for the
>last month.  the learning curve is steep, but the ready availability of
>free libraries of obvious superiority to those available for watcom
>makes 
>it an easy call. (i will say, however, that serial io stuff for DJGPP
>seems somewhat less developed, apparently a artifact of it's UNIX
>origin. the pcl4c library under watcom is nice.)

Main thing I generally hear is that Watcom has Win95 extentions while
DJGPP doesn't. Doesn't bother me much; I figure DOS and DJGPP will
easily outlive win95 ;)

>DJGPP installs itself. just pkunzip -d it! definitely get the latest
>RHIDE release, (the beta from the home page has the nasty mouse bug
>fixed (the one where viewing the output screen lost the cursor...)) get
>the link from DJ's links page:
> 
>http://www.delorie.com/
>
>i have had no problem compiling anything (including Allegro) even with
>a very pared down DJGPP distribution (delete the makefile lines
>referring to "setup" in the Allegro makefile if you do not want to
>install C++)!
>
>while you are still a watcomnik, you should get the PDCurses 2.3
>distribution from ftp://ftp.xylogics.com/ (they say beta, i say stable!)
>so you can see what your missing! (curses is standard in GCC).  the
>pdcurs23 stuff compiles right out of the box for watcom.

Coming from Watcom, you might want to also, as a complement to
allegro, look at jlib, as it works with watcom *and* djgpp, and linux
and x-windows. As far as I can see from examples compiled under both,
DJGPP is at least as good and fast as watcom.. And only lately have I
really began to look in to the plethora of optimizing features of
djgpp.