OS4 developing

[walkero]

Hello everyone.
Does anyone know if with the OS4 a developer pack will be released also?
Can anyone tell me a good book for Amiga programming and a good site for installing the gcc.
That could be a good "howto" article for the people of amiga.org.
thanks.

[iamaboringperson]

The os4 developer pack will be out shortly after os4....
that shouldn't be too long ....

[Steady]

Hi Walkero,

As iamaboringperson said, the developer pack should be released soon after OS4 is released. At least, I would be surprised if this were not the case.

The best books for Amiga programming were the Amiga ROM Kernal Manuals, but unfortunately they are now difficult to come by, though not impossible if you are patient. They also focus on Workbench 2, but are still largely relevant. Using this and the Release 3.x release notes/autodocs, you should have no real problems making programs for later AmigaOS versions. Until then, if you obtain the Developer CD 2.1, you will get AmigaGuide versions that you can view on your Amiga. Nothing beats an actual book, though, IMHO.

There are sites to help in programming the Amiga and installing gcc. I cannot remember them offhand. I will post them later if no-one else beats me to it, but they probably will.

[alx]

@walkero

Welcome to A.org :-D

If you're serious about developing for OS4, perhaps the best thing to do would be to contact Hyperion - some betatesters seem to have development tools :-o

Apart from that, there do seem to be various guidelines for writing programs that'll transfer to OS4 easily (obviously don't hit the custom chips, don't use undocumented DOS features etc) but as I'm not a programmer you'd have to see if someone else knows more.

[Animagic]

I really dont know anythiong about the subject.
I just posted to ask:
Are you the walkero from #amigahellas?

[walkero]

thanks guys for your replies...
I believe that it is better to wait for the OS4 Dev CD and begin for creating my wildest dream...
You may lough after you hear this but I'd like to see the "GIMP" ported to amiga.
It is compiled with gcc and the source is free at their site... Also it could be a good boost for graphics manipulation on Amiga.

Tell me your opinion.

Animagic: Yes, thats me. How do ya know that??...

[downix]

@walkero

Well, as an interim solution, you can develop for MorphOS until AOS4 appears.  Realistically, porting between them should not be too difficult, and you could get a head-start that way.

[gregthecanuck]

Walkero -

I think you are touching on what I think is a crucial strategy to help bootstrap OS 4 - make it as easy as possible to port over popular open-source projects.

Many of these seem to be Linux-based and have some sort of Win32 port so most have had some cross-platform considerations.

GIMP is a great start.  There is a LOT of stuff out there - Apache, PostgreSQL, Project Mono, etc...  Whatever shared libraries needs replicating on OS 4 to support these efforts, in my view, should be at least co-sponsored by Hyperion at some point.  It just makes OS 4 that much more attractive.


Cheers!

Greg

[Cymric]

All in all, I believe it would be a good thing if all major Unix/Linux/BSD-libraries were to be ported, or OS4'ified. That includes glibc, pthreads, GTK+, and a few others. A proper X server would be marvellous. Of course, people should stop treating a new hypothetical glibc.library (a descendant of the infamous ixemul.library) like a thing to be avoided at all costs, and realise that the benefit of having easy access to a wealth of open source software far outweighs the 'disadvantage' of a program not being completely native. The idea is to use the computer and promote it, and if that requires a 'piggyback' on open source stuff, so be it. From what I read in the feature list of OS4, I think it will be considerably easier to port glibc than was the case under OS2 and OS3, anyway. In any case, port the above libs and programs, and GIMP itself should be a piece of cake. Which in itself would be a good program to have---but wasn't there already a good native PPC-program (ImageFX? Photoshop?) available?

By the way, if anyone from Hyperion is reading this, would you mind commenting on the idea and feasibility of porting the libraries mentioned above, in particular glibc?