Reasons why I don't like emulators - or why xx-UAE is really unusable

[Leffmann]

How come cross-developing is not an option then?

The first thing I noticed when I picked up Amiga after 10 years, was how clunky AmigaOS felt to work in compared to newer systems, but with tools like vbcc and vamos it was relatively easy to move it all out to the host, and for the most part I could automate everything from building to running, so I rarely had to go into the emulated Amiga. And I found that by binding the mouse pointer capture/release to the middle mouse button, having to switch to and from the emulator was pain-free.

[Leffmann]

In principle, yes, but how do I get the binaries then back to the Amiga for testing? This machine has no network card (I don't really plan to waste money on that) the CDRW died a couple of years ago, and the only removable medium is the floppy, which is too small for any serious application. The only chance is to use a PC and an emulator on the PC, though I then loose the workflow, i.e. the DevPac assembler and the SAS compiler interface. Both of which is pretty useful for library and systems development. In essence, it would require a completely different workflow. Possible, but inconvenient.

Actually I meant to cross-develop on the host, to the emulated Amiga. You can run Genam, SAS/C and most other well-behaved command line tools on the PC-side using vamos, but I guess you mean that you require the full Devpac IDE, the SAS/C GUI for project control, CPR, and Cygnus Editor etc. to work.

[Leffmann]

Sigh. How do I compile a library then? SAS/C is not available under Linux. In other words, it requires quite an amount of porting the sources to make this happen. Maybe you have the time to do that, but I don't. I just want to compile and bugfix what I have, and do not have enough spare time to invest to port from one tool chain to a completely different tool chain.

It doesn't require any porting or significant amounts of work at all. You just use Vamos to run the Amiga command line tools directly in Linux. You can't really throw your hands in the air until you've actually tried it.