Re: [ANN] Bochs bios ported to gcc

Kevin O'Connor
2008-04-07T13:05:45Z

On Sun, Apr 06, 2008 at 11:42:11PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> bcc is truly horrible. gcc is, of course, best, although it does produce
> bloated 16-bit code.

With gcc, the text size has actually been significantly reduced - I'm
not sure if this is because I'm using -fwhole-program and -Os or if it
is just the result of bcc being so bad.

The biggest problem I've run into is stack usage on the 16-bit bios
calls.

>For "proper" 16-bit code, OpenWatcom is currently the
> best open source compiler, and it's actually getting usable even on a Linux
> host.

One of the developers on the bochs list also recommended OpenWatcom.

The bios currently has quite a bit of 32bit code in addition to the
16bit code. It's very convenient to be able to compile the same code
in both modes (eg, printf, inb, etc.). I'd need to move both 32bit
and 16bit code to OpenWatcom to do this.