On 03/26/10 01:46, Kevin O'Connor wrote:
I hear Open Watcom works well for 16bit code, but I'd guess gcc does a better job with regular 32bit code. A solution for the 16bit code wouldn't work well if it reduced the code sharing with the 32bit code. Either all the code would need to be compiled with Open Watcom or the final SeaBIOS binary would need to be a mix of gcc and Open Watcom code - both seem risky.
The other difficulty with Open Watcom is its availability. It's nice to be able to compile SeaBIOS without requiring special packages. That was a big advantage for the qemu/kvm maintainers.
Just my $0.02 here, I think relying on a compiler that doesn't run on Linux would make it practically impossible for some of us to contribute to SeaBIOS. Even if my contributions are rather small.
The way SeaBIOS is built is such a bliss compared to working with the old BOCHS codebase.
Cheers, Jes