22.4 Where to find DJGPP packages?

Q: Where can I find an example of XXXX / a package doing YYYY ?

A: Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET) maintains a DJGPP Web Ring page. DJ Delorie offers another very large collection of DJGPP-related links.

Here is a list of places you might look into for examples of frequently needed code fragments, or for packages people keep asking about:

• Interrupt-driven support of peripheral devices and hooking hardware interrupts:
  • The Allegro library is an excellent place to look for code that install hardware interrupt handlers and handles several peripheral devices.
  • Alaric B. Williams maintains a library of utility functions and example handlers, useful for writing hardware interrupt handling code.
  • Bill Currie wrote examples of interrupt handlers which should get you off the ground if you need to write your own handlers.
  • Martynas Kunigelis donated a tutorial and a working code that installs a handler for the hardware keyboard interrupt 09h that can also serve as a good example of handling interrupts.
  • you can look at the latest version of Sound Blaster support library at Oulu or on DJGPP server; this is maintained by Joel Hunter.
  • check out the package available from SimTel.NET that hooks the timer interrupt.
  • if you need a serial communications package, check out the SVAsync library.
  • another package for serial communications, called BCSERIO, was written by Bill Currie. BCSERIO is available from Bill's home page.
  • Peter Marinov has written pmcom, a serial communications library for DJGPP; it is available from DJGPP sites.
  • if you need serial communications from programs that use the Allegro library, try DZComm, which is available from the v2tk/allegro directory on the usual DJGPP sites. You can also download DZComm from GeoCities via the Web.
  • for system hardware and diagnostics software, check out the SYSINFO package.
• Network support libraries:
  • for TCP/IP, check out the WATTCP library, which is available from the DJGPP Web site, or from a Europe mirror, it provides the TCP/IP sockets interface. (I am told that you can safely ignore the warnings you get when compiling the package.)
  • another DJGPP-compatible C networking library is KA9Q NOS TCP/IP package.
  • another TCP/IP stack is Watt-32; it is basically WATTCP upgraded to include DHCP, RARP, file-based lookup, and BSD-compatible API.
  • as part of the DOS Lynx port done by DJ Delorie, he ported the WATTCP library as well; that port is available from DJ's server. There's also a newer DJGPP port of Lynx.
  • a Winsock library called libsocket is available, originally developed by Indrek Mandre, currently maintained by R. Dawe. The latest version (0.8.0, as of this writing) is available from the libsocket home page, and via FTP from the DJGPP archives. The latest versions support both Winsock and the newer Winsock2 VxD which is part of Windows 98. Many useful links to related packages and info is available from Rich Dawe's home page.
  • if you need to program an IPX interface, you can get started by downloading examples of IPX programming, and also read the IPX Web page.
  • code to access the NetBIOS API with DJGPP is available from A. Sinan Unur's page.
• Dynamically loaded code:
  • Check out the DLM (Dynamic Link Modules) environment for DJGPP, written by Ilya Ryzhenkov, available from the DLM home page. This package makes it very easy to use dynamically loaded code, since it has almost no impact on how you write your code, and supports all common C++ features, like inheritance, virtual functions, etc.
  • A dynamic linker for DJGPP, called DLX, is available from the DJGPP sites.
• X library:
  • the Xlibemu library includes Xt and Xmu toolkits, a 3D version of the AW toolkit, a few demo applications (e.g. xmine), and can be used to compile Tcl/Tk and GNU Emacs with X support. Xlibemu is based on X11R5 and was originally developed by Antonio Costa for DJGPP v1.x. It is also available on an alternative site and on the DJGPP server.
  • there are also the Xlib and Xt libraries for the Quarterdeck's DV/X environment (you will also need qdlib102.zip and qdtkt102.zip from the same site). This is also for DJGPP v1.x.
• Ports of various GNU utilities not included in DJGPP:
  • Many of these are now part of DJGPP, so first look on SimTel.NET mirrors with rest of DJGPP.
  • Marc Singer maintains a DJGPP port of RCS, the Revision Control System.
  • bowman ported MC, the GNU Midnight Commander, a Norton Commander clone, to DJGPP. The port is available via the Web.
  • Waldemar Schultz ported David Gillespie's Pascal to C translator p2c version 1.02. the port is available from the DJGPP sites.
  • A port of GMP, the GNU Multiple-Precision math library, is available via FTP.
• GUI libraries:
  • SWORD (an acronym for System With Objects for Rapid Development) is a set of C++ classes that provide the developer with a portable development environment. SWORD classes cover subject such as building graphical user interface, date/time, files, network (socket client and server), strings, random numbers, vectors and matrices. SWORD was written and maintained by Eric Nicolas and the Sword Group. The latest version 3.0beta06.1 is available from the SWORD download site. An older version 2.10 is available together with DJGPP, in the v2tk directory as sw21_*.zip. SWORD is a powerful system for dedicated programmers, specifically designed to allow a programmer to learn GUI programming. However, I'm told that its documentation might not be clear enough for beginners; documentation for version 3.0 is being worked on.
  • JPTUI is an object-oriented textual user interface, written by Jean-Pierre Delprat. It is designed for C++, and supports several languages besides US English. You can get JPTUI from SimTel.NET or any of its mirrors.
  • the BCGUI package, written by Bill Currie; you can get it from Bill upon request.
  • Salvador Eduardo Tropea (SET) maintains a DJGPP port of Borland's Turbo Vision. This port also supports the Linux console. For more info on this port, visit the DJGPP port of TVision site. The latest version of TVision is available with the rest of DJGPP from SimTel.NET. Instructions for installing TVision are available in the HOWTO repository.
  • Another port of TVision was done by Robert Hoehne. Due to copyright problems, that port cannot be distributed (at Borland's request, Robert has removed it from his Web page). So you will have to get the Turbo Vision sources from the Borland's site, patch them using patches included in the RHIDE distribution, and rebuild it yourself.
  • A Turbo Vision like library for plain C, called C-Desktop, by Brett Porter, is available from DJGPP sites on SimTel.NET mirrors.
  • Another GUI library is XView-PC GUI interface, maintained by Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz. XView-PC is available via the Web and also via the FTP transfer.
  • MGUI is a cross-platform C/C++ GUI library for DOS, Windows 3.X and 9X/NT, and Unix X Window environments. The DJGPP version is based on GRX. MGUI is available fromSimTel.NET mirrors.
• Game programming:
  • The best library for game programming is the Allegro game programming library, written and maintained by Shawn Hargreaves; also available from Allegro home page. Allegro is ported to X under Linux, to MS-Windows using MSVC, and can also be compiled with Watcom compiler. A tutorial for game programming, called Allegro Vivace, was written by George Foot, and is available from George's home page.
  • Also try Jlib written by J P Griffiths. This library is best suited to multi-platform game programming, since it's portable to Linux, MSVC, Watcom, and X11. Visit the Jlib Web page, for the latest developments.
  • Another popular library for game development is MGL, the MegaGraphics Library by SciTech Software. MGL provides transparent support for DirectX, OpenGL, Mesa, and several other popular graphics standards (although some of these standards reportedly only work when used with RSXNTDJ). The latest version 4.1 has full DJGPP support. MGL is available from SciTech's FTP site.
  • The Mesa library itself supports DJGPP and is available from the Mesa home page.
  • Yet another package that supports DirectX 5 for DJGPP and RSXNTDJ is available via the Web.
  • FreeBE/AF is a free implementation of the VBE/AF graphics driver API, which provides high performance 2D hardware acceleration for packages such as Allegro and SciTech MGL; it is available from SimTel.
• VGA graphics:
  • Paul Fenwick wrote an X-Mode package Xlib or Xlib at Oulu.
  • Matthew Bentley has written a C++ VGA graphics library for mode 13h (and is reportedly 4 times faster than Allegro in this mode) called EZVGA. It is available as ezvga14.zip from the v2tk directory on DJGPP sites.
• Multi-tasking libraries and OS kernels:
  • Pthreads, a Posix threads library, is a portable, standard package supported on many platforms.
  • The LWP package is a lightweight preemptive multitasking library written by Josh Turpen for DJGPP. It has an extremely simple API and is very fast. You can get LWP via the Web.
  • PDMLWP is a multithreading package for DJGPP. It is available as pdmlwpNN.zip (NN is a version number) from the v2tk directory on the DJGPP sites.
  • Bill Currie has written a COFF boot loader using DJGPP; you can get this COFF boot loader from Alaric Williams' Web site.
  • Palantir is a multitasking kernel for Allegro, written and maintained by Dim Zegebart. Palantir is available from DJGPP sites and via HTTP.
• Development toolkits and packages:
  • MSS is a package for detecting problems with dynamic memory allocation, such as using uninitialized memory, overwriting the limits of allocated blocks, memory leaks, repeated deallocations, etc. It is available from the DJGPP sites, and supports both C and C++ programs. MSS was written and is maintained by Peter Palotas.
  • Another package for debugging memory-related problems is FORTIFY.
  • YAMD is yet another malloc debugging package; it was written by Nate Eldredge and is available from Nate's home page.
  • Cdecl is a program for translating hairy C and C++ declarations and type casts into human-readable English. A DJGPP port by Nate Eldredge is available via FTP.
  • LCLINT is a Lint clone. Lint is a program which analyses C source files, identifies unsafe or potentially buggy code and prints error/warning messages about each such case. gcc -Wall can identify many such cases as well, due to the superior diagnostics of GCC, but for those who still want Lint, you can find LCLint sources on the Web.
  • VIM is a programmer's editor, mostly popular in the Unix world. It features syntax highlighting for more than 60 different file formats, context-sensitive help, and a macro language for writing extensions. The sources are available via ftp, and should compile with DJGPP. Binaries are available for Windows 9X and NT, as well as for DOS.
  • SeeR is a scripting engine to use in extensible programs. It features basic C and C++ operators and data types, access to C and C++ functions and classes, support for multitasking, ability to run several scripts at the same time, etc. SeeR was written by Przemyslaw Arkadiusz Podsiadly, and is available from his Web page.
  • Nate Eldredge wrote a library of farptr versions of most of the mem*/str* library functions. You can get this library from Nate's home page.
  • Berkeley Yacc, byacc, and bzip2 compressor/decompressor, both ported by Juan Manuel Guerrero, are available from the v2apps directory on the DJGPP sites.
• Interface with Windows:
  • libwin is a library of functions that allow DJGPP programs to interface with some Windows services. This includes clipboard and registry access, control of the DOS box and virtual machine titles, and interface with Windows Virtual Devices, VxDs in short. The library can be downloaded via the Web.
  • libmslot is a library of functions for using the Windows LAN Manager Mailslot API, which is a unidirectional form of Interprocess Communication (IPC) facility. It was written by Richard Dawe, and is available from his home page.
  • LibINI is a library for manipulating Windows style .INI configuration files. You can find it in the programming section of <http://stealthtech.tsx.org>.