MSDOS support

MSDOS support

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Emacs running on MSDOS was probably a technical wonder (Eli and all
other people that made it possible deserve kudos for this excellent
work), and probably it was very important at the time.  But at this time
supporting this platform does not seem useful anymore.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to remove the MSDOS support?

The main reason is that there is no evidence that there are any emacs
users still using this proprietary platform.

The MSDOS support has been broken in CVS for almost one year.  There
were no complaints from any users.

The removal of the MSDOS support was announced last year and widely
publicized in the first round of old platform removals.  We received no
comments from any user about MSDOS, so RMS formally approved the
removal.  It was not removed because Eli said he _might_ want to make it
run again.

The impact of MSDOS on the code is very high, there are hundreds or
#ifdef MSDOS/DJGPP/GO32 just in the src directory.  Not having those
#ifdefs would simplify the code and make it easier to read and maintain.

MSDOS is the only supported platform that does not define
"subprocesses", that's another chunk of code that is special-cased for
MSDOS.

There is an active burden from keeping this non-working port in the
tree: file names need to be chopped to fit into the 8.3 format (last
time was just one week ago).

There's no guarantee that MSDOS code will ever work again, but given the
absence of users, it does not seem something worthwhile doing, so better
get rid of if sooner rather than later.

Re: MSDOS support

[David Robinow]

On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 3:17 AM, Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> wrote:
>...
> Wouldn't it be a good idea to remove the MSDOS support?
>
> The main reason is that there is no evidence that there are any emacs
> users still using this proprietary platform.

Hey, watch your mouth. Who says DOS is proprietary?
See http://www.freedos.org/

(I have no idea if any version of emacs runs on FreeDos.)




 Back to reality:
 Dump MSDOS support.
 Point DOS users (if there are any) to the last version that actually works.

Re: MSDOS support

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:16:37 -0400
> From: "David Robinow" <drobinow@gmail.com>
> 
> See http://www.freedos.org/
> 
> (I have no idea if any version of emacs runs on FreeDos.)

It does (or at least it did last time I looked).

Re: MSDOS support

[Yavor Doganov]

David Robinow wrote:
> 
> Hey, watch your mouth. Who says DOS is proprietary?
> See http://www.freedos.org/

Some small parts of FreeDOS are proprietary, but the system cannot
work without them -- so it is not a free system.

Re: MSDOS support

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Yavor Doganov <yavor@gnu.org>
> Date: Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:10:55 +0300
> 
> David Robinow wrote:
> > 
> > Hey, watch your mouth. Who says DOS is proprietary?
> > See http://www.freedos.org/
> 
> Some small parts of FreeDOS are proprietary, but the system cannot
> work without them

Which ones are those?

These 2 URLs

   http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=General_Information/363
   http://fd-doc.sourceforge.net/faq/cgi-bin/viewfaq.cgi?faq=Using_FreeDOS/7

seem to say that the OS is under GPL.

If you mean the 4DOS shell, then it is not necessary to have a fully
functional system, since there's a very good port of Bash that can
be used in its stead.

Re: MSDOS support

[Yavor Doganov]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Some small parts of FreeDOS are proprietary, but the system cannot
> > work without them
> 
> Which ones are those?

I don't know, I vaguely remember one of them was an essential driver.

3 or 4 years ago I attended a conference and there was a speech by one
of the FreeDOS core developers.  I asked him whether the system is
100% free so that I could install it on my 286 and 8088 machines.  He
said that some parts (he named them precisely, I just can't remember)
are non-free and there are both legal and technical problems that
prevent their replacement.

It appears there is some truth in this, because the link at gnu.org
was removed last year:

RCS file: /web/www/www/links/links.html,v
[...]
revision 1.131
date: 2007-09-11 02:27:23 +0300;  author: karl;  state: Exp;  lines: +1 -3;  commitid: qaxpOznA3ziwifxs;
freedos contains nonfree software, confirmed by rms, ticket 340566

Re: MSDOS support

[Chong Yidong]

Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:

> Emacs running on MSDOS was probably a technical wonder (Eli and all
> other people that made it possible deserve kudos for this excellent
> work), and probably it was very important at the time.  But at this time
> supporting this platform does not seem useful anymore.
>
> Wouldn't it be a good idea to remove the MSDOS support?

We've already decided to honor Eli's request to keep it.  Also, the time
has passed for making such changes.

Thanks for doing the cleanup that you've done so far.  The rest will
have to wait for the next development cycle.  Please concentrate on
fixing bugs now.

Re: MSDOS support

[Dan Nicolaescu]

Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> writes:

  > Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:
  > 
  > > Emacs running on MSDOS was probably a technical wonder (Eli and all
  > > other people that made it possible deserve kudos for this excellent
  > > work), and probably it was very important at the time.  But at this time
  > > supporting this platform does not seem useful anymore.
  > >
  > > Wouldn't it be a good idea to remove the MSDOS support?
  > 
  > We've already decided to honor Eli's request to keep it.  

Can you please point me to where this decision was made?
The only public decision was to allow me to remove MSDOS, and I didn't
do it because Eli requested it and there were 100 other old things to
remove at the time and give it a bit more time for users to show up.
So AFAICT the decision to remove it still stands.
9 months later no users have requested the platform to be fixed, nor was
it fixed.

  > Also, the time has passed for making such changes.

That's a different story, we'll talk in the next release cycle.