How can I help with FreeDOS 1.1?

[Joe Emenaker]

I apologize in advance. I'm sending this message to both freedos-devel and freedos-users because there seems to be discussion about the delays hampering 1.1's rollout on both lists. I'm sending to them in different messages, however, so that nobody will get a nasty bounce message if they do a "reply all" and they're not subscribed to the other list. That, and also so that people in both lists won't really get duplicate messages (except for this one... ;P ).

I've long been a fan of FreeDOS, and I've been meaning to switch over to it for my Ghost network disks for some time, but there have always been some quirks and bugs to work around... and I've already worked around the ones in DOS 6.22, so I figured I stick with the devil I know. However, now that I've finally found a FreeDOS kernel that sees USB drives natively (without having to load any drivers) and that the latest devload.exe seems to be able to load all of the MS-LANMAN drivers I need after config.sys is processed, I believe I now have, within reach, the ability to make a USB drive which can boot, autodetect the network card, load the appropriate drivers, and run ghost multicast. (Yes, I know about the various "network boot disks" out there.. but they're unsuitable for my purposes, so I have to make my own)

So, anyway, I'm excited about FreeDOS 1.1, and I want to help get it out the door.

As far as what I can offer. I'm pretty fluent in DOS batch programming, linux bash, Perl, Java, C... a few others. It appears that FreeDOS uses a packaging system. Well, I've rolled some of my own packages for Debian, and I don't think FreeDOS's packaging system can be more complicated and Debian's. Oh, and I've got some free time. So... what needs doing?

Oh, and are there web-pages you can direct me to which explain:
 1 - Who's in charge? Who decides when 1.1 is ready to go. Who packages it into a CD image? Who approves/rejects packages?
 2 - The FreeDOS standard file-structure. While MS-DOS would throw everything into C:\DOS, FreeDOS uses C:\FDOS\BIN, C:\FDOS\DOC... and some stuff is further down in C:\FDOS\BIN\CTMOUSE. Where is the manifesto which helps decide what goes where?

- Joe


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[Eric Auer-3]

Hi Pat, Joe, Mateusz, Rugxulo, others,

I would suggest to keep this on-list for a bit longer,
but to switch to either the user or the devel list :-)

[Joe]
>> So, anyway, I'm excited about FreeDOS 1.1, and
>> I want to help get it out the door.

Thanks a lot! I think most needed at the moment is
packaging of missing updates... Mateusz made a list
about missing FDUPDATE items earlier this week:

http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=200911011751.00324.mateusz%40viste-family.net

BASE missing: Assign, Diskcomp, Display/Graftabl/Printer,
Backup/Restore (non-existing), Fasthelp, GRAPHICS, HIMEMX,
kc/keycode (Ask Aitor!), KEYB and KPDOS, unformat, vol.

Only items in CAPS really need action as the others did not
have any updates since 1.0 so we can re-use 1.0 packages.

BASE outdated: CHKDSK, CPIDOS, DEBUG, DEFRAG, DELTREE, EDLIN,
FIND, SORT and XCOPY (?) - Rugxulo, did we forget anything?

BASE with FDUPDATE / freedos.org version mismatch: UNDELETE
(FAT32 beta?) and COUNTRY SYS (data file) and maybe others.
How about UIDE (IDE-SATA-disk-CD-DVD) and USB drivers...?

BASE which are already okay: Append, Attrib, Choice, Command
(needs debugging of stops-to-run-apps bug!), Comp, Ctmouse,
Diskcopy, EDIT (Aitor plans update?), Emm386, Exe2bin, Fc,
FDAPM (I have updates pending!), FDISK (LBA/detection fixed?),
Fdshield, Fdxms, Fdxms286, FORMAT (some updates pending?),
*GCDROM*, Help/HTMLHELP, Himem, *Jemm386*, *JemmEx*, Label,
Lbacache, Mem, Mirror, Mode, More, Move, Nansi, Nlsfunc, Print,
Recover, Replace, Share, SHSUCDX (how about the other fork?),
Swsubst/Subst/Join and Tree.

Items in CAPS need some checking, *marked* items are new in
comparison to FreeDOS 1.0 :-).

>>  1 - Who's in charge? Who decides when 1.1 is ready to go.
>> Who packages it into a CD image? Who approves/rejects packages?

To package the CD image, one would use 1.0 as basis and
replace packages by newer versions. Updates in installer
software might support new things such as the use of 1.1
combined binary / source ZIP packages here but we can
also use 1.1 packages to autogenerate 1.0 style ones, in
one mode for a binary-only CD and in another with sources.

For experiments, you can master a new ISO yourself:

www.mail-archive.com/freedos-devel@.../msg06886.html
http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:dC-XKe1zkXkJ:www.mail-archive.com/freedos-devel%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg06886.html+mkisofs+freedos+2009&hl=nl&gl=nl&strip=1

www.freedos.org/freedos/images/logos/ and for crystalcase/jewelcase:
www.auersoft.eu/soft/by-others/ freedos-cdrom-label-art-FDLFinal.zip

mkisofs -R -D -V "FreeDOS 1.1rc1" -o ~/fdbasecd-remastered.iso \
  -b isolinux/isolinux.bin -c isolinux/boot.cat \
  -no-emul-boot \-boot-load-size 4 \
  -boot-info-table /tmp/fdbasecd-contents/

See also: http://wiki.fdos.org/Installation/BootDiskCreateCDROM

[Pat]
> I'm the project coordinator, so I get the honor of making a lot of the
> decisions.  Of course, there is a lot of input from the community as
> well.

Package decisions are usually inspired by suggestions
and community reactions indeed... However, a realistic
goal for FreeDOS 1.1 would be to contain all that is
in 1.0 but in updated versions :-) In particular the
BASE category is important. Of course there will be
exceptions, such as adding the new free USB drivers,
but it is not the main goal to add many new packages.

>>  2 - The FreeDOS standard file-structure. While MS-DOS would throw
>> everything into C:\DOS, FreeDOS uses C:\FDOS\BIN, C:\FDOS\DOC... and some
>> stuff is further down in C:\FDOS\BIN\CTMOUSE. Where is the manifesto which
>> helps decide what goes where?

Yes, there is a nice Wiki page and some emails about that ;-)
And of course you can look at existing packages in FDUPDATE.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Package
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=LSM
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=4AED685C.7050207%40jpberlin.de
... plus URLs mentioned there:

www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/fdupdate/
www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/fdupdate/wip/
www.freedos.org/cgi-bin/lsm.cgi?mode=dir&dir=base
...

Eric



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[Joe Emenaker]

Eric Auer wrote:

 2 - The FreeDOS standard file-structure. While MS-DOS would throw
everything into C:\DOS, FreeDOS uses C:\FDOS\BIN, C:\FDOS\DOC... and some
stuff is further down in C:\FDOS\BIN\CTMOUSE. Where is the manifesto which
helps decide what goes where?
      

Yes, there is a nice Wiki page and some emails about that ;-)
And of course you can look at existing packages in FDUPDATE.

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=Package
  

Oh, okay. But what I don't see there is some decision-making policy about extraneous directories. For example, why does CTMOUSE get its own folder under /FDOS/BIN/? What criteria must a package meet in order to warrant special directories?

Also, same goes for the /FDOS main directory. Looks like there's not a lot there. BIN/, DOC/, SOURCE/, APPINFO, FDAUTO.BAT...  are there any rules/guidelines aimed at keeping this very tidy, or can packages just throw random stuff in there?

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/freedos/index.php?title=LSM
  

Has there been discussion about adding some fields like "Category:" or "Provides:"? "Category:" would be useful if a user wants to see all of the installed (or installable) packages for "DISKUTIL" or "COMPRESSION". Likewise, "Provides:" could describe what provides a certain function. For example, I only need *one* EMM. I don't need to install JEMM, EMM386, QEMM386, etc. etc. Just one will do. But, I'd also like to be able to choose from all available. So it would be nice, down the road someday, if the FDPKG or FDUPDATE or some future tool could show me, say, what packages "provide" a EMM, or an ANSI, or zipfile capability, or 89-assembler, or whatever.

- Joe


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[Joe Emenaker]

Eric Auer wrote:
> Thanks a lot! I think most needed at the moment is
> packaging of missing updates... Mateusz made a list
> about missing FDUPDATE items earlier this week:
>  
So... does that mean that I should just start picking stuff from the
list and packaging it and submitting it? Or am I supposed to propose
something I want to package and wait for the "go ahead"?

- Joe


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