Should we really crack IBrowse 2.4???

[NovaCoder]

The key is available all over the place so why bother cracking it?

[NovaCoder]

Chris who has ported netsurf to OS4 has made quite lot work to make backporting to 68k/OS3.X possible and little easier.

When I last spoke to Chris about porting to 68k he said that Netsurf renders internally in 16bit, converting that to 8bit for AGA would kill performance.   If Jens ever gets around to releasing the *fabled* 16bit chunky mode for the Mrk2 then a port to AGA 68k starts to become more realistic.

[NovaCoder]

Hiya Chris,

We'll if it's rendering to 8bit that will make an AGA port more practical.   I don't want to commit to doing a port as I've already got 3 big AGA projects occupying my limited 'hobby coding time'

If you can give me a link to the source code etc I'll take a quick look at it to see what I think the chances of an AGA port are.

[NovaCoder]

Ok I've download the NetSurf sources and started to compile a few classes to see how it hangs together on OS3.

The Amiga code that I've seen so far looks nicely put together, good job Chris.   What do you use to compile it Chris, I use AmiDevCpp myself.

Anyone know if the 68k SDL port's sources have been published?  I might be able to use them for reference.

Also I agree with the above post, an Amiga 68k browser is never going to be good enough to use for most sites but I also think it's a bit sad that the current 68k browsers are so far behind the times.

Like I said before, I'm way too busy with my other 68k ports to commit to this project at the moment.

[NovaCoder]

so novacoder can buy all the pizza, beer, meth, crack, pot,coke and asian hookers he will need to keep himself happy while coding on this project.

Well I'll drink to that!

[NovaCoder]

on all respect, despite what chris suggests its not just a walk by to port his netsurf back to 68k. if it was so easy he would best do that himself in an instant, gifted as he is and already familiar with the code and implementation details.

No it's not easy to port, and that's speaking from experience

I gave this a good crack but even with Chris's excellent help I still struggled to get my build environment configured properly and get to the stage where I could do some actual coding.

We need someone who is good with setting up a 68k cross compiler environment, building library dependencies and editing makefiles (none of which is me).

[NovaCoder]

I'd be happy to do that but I'm not sure if there are any 68k coders left in the community who would help.   I only put my hand up originally because nobody else offered to give it a try.

I think nearly all the C/C++ 68k coders have either gone to OS4/AROS/MorphOS or they've just left the community.   I'm the only one who seems to be coding large scale C/C++ 68k projects these days and obviously my time is very limited.

[NovaCoder]

@Novacoder
Stupid question perhaps, but why cross compile?

Well you always have to cross compile when coding for Amiga on any modern projects because the only modern compiler we have is gcc (UNIX).   Thanks to AmiDevCpp though it's not as painful as it could be for most projects, you can simple import the source code into the workspace and AmiDevCpp will automatically create your makefile and setup your standard dependencies.   I managed to get a new port of Quake 2 running in two days using this approach.

With NetSurf you have to setup your own UNIX cross compiler environment (eg using Cygwin) and then manually edit the various makefiles to try and get it to build a 68k executable.    This is not something I'm very familiar with or something that I'd enjoy learning how to do.

[NovaCoder]

Hiya again,

I've tried to build a few big projects using vbcc with CubicIDE and I could never get it to produce a reliable exe.    After coding for a few years now for Amiga 68k the only ones I've used to do anything with are StormC V4 (gcc mode) and AmiDevCpp.

GCC is the best bet for porting work anyway, most of the things I've worked on (ScummVM, DosBox) are coded with gcc in mind, even my DOOM port was originally written for gcc.

[NovaCoder]

i think porting software you can forget about anything else than gcc. if you roll off your own project you can tailor it for something else.

That's true, shame gcc on 68k is so damn painful really

[NovaCoder]

Hey NovaCoder this is completely not part of the OP, but since you are here and here I am wondering...what is the status towards DOSBoxAGA?

Yep, very off topic

You can read all about it on the project thread -> Dossy Box, actually it's in my signature you big silly.

Matt has been making good progress with the dynamic 68k core and it's actually generating 68k code now.   I've been very lazy, too busy on my port of Quake 2  to AGA.

[NovaCoder]

What is your definition of "modern"?

Something that supports C++