From: Spiro Trikaliotis (trik-news_at_gmx.de)
Date: 2003-10-09 10:08:27
Hello,
On Thu, Oct 09, 2003 at 12:44:10AM +0200, Groepaz wrote:
> On Wednesday 08 October 2003 23:38, Ullrich von Bassewitz wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity: Is there more than one version of vice? I thought
> > the only difference between the versions was the user interface, but it
> > seems that they do also differ in the supported features.
>
> yes... other than common belief, vice isnt really a well written program
> when it comes to portability. there are lots of differences between the
> different "ports", not only in the userinterface, but also in the supported
> features.
Well, this is only half true.
VICE essentially is arch-independant. There are some parts, especially very
old ones, which are not written very portable and confuse
architecture-dependant with -independant stuff. Some (many?) changes to every
new version of VICE are rewriting parts of the code to make a distinction
between architecture-dependant stuff and non-dependant stuff.
As for the RR-Net emulation, it is written in a portable way. Anyway,
currently, I have problems with the libpcap library on Unix, since it does
not allow sending raw packets (which is possible with the Windows version of
it). Reception of the packets works, but not sending.
I'm currently thinking about two possibilities:
1. Make an own version of libpcap, adding send capabilities
2. Use another library like TAP.
Anyway, I don't have experience with TAP, ruling out no 2, and I don't have
experience with anything but Linux, so even no 1 is not very easy to
accomplish.
If anyone wants to help out, just write me (privately is better, I think, is
this is getting OT here).
> (for example, the windows version doesnt support rs232 emulation,
> which the linux port does [even if it doesnt work, which is another story])
I never looked at the rs232 emulation, so I'm not sure if it heavily uses
Unix features or not. Anyway, there seems not to be much interest of the
VICE developers in this, thus, it is not taken care of.
> as for rr-net ... its even a quite "interisting" solution in the win port ....
> using some 3rd party program to be able to hook into the systems networking
> (instead of implementing a common interface and a lowlevel device driver).
WinPCAP was used deliberately as it is available on many plattforms (Linux,
BSD, Solaris, Irix, ..., and Windows 9x/Me/NT/2K/XP, as well as OS2), so the
thought was to be able to use most parts of the code for every OS.
If you have a look into the sources, you encounter that there is a file
src/c64/tfe.c which has the arch-independant stuff, as well as
arch/win32/tfearch.c which performs the interfacing to the OS. Do you want
another interface, other than WinPCAP? Just replace tfearch.c by anything
else (or, even better, make autoconf decide itself).
> whats most disturbing with all that is that appearently none of the vice
> team really cares about making all features available across all platforms,
Every member of the team implements features for his favourite plattform,
that is, the one he is using himself. This is only natural. I, for example,
could not even implement something for BeOS, for example, since I don't have
this around.
Anyway, most times, we do coordinate our efforts to be able to ports
features as easy as possible.
> nor about fixing problems that are known for ages (like the rs232 emulation
> beeing broken since vice >1.4, the autostart bugs, the filerequester issues
> in linux, etcetcetc)...hmpf
BTW: VICE is open source. :-)
Which autostart bugs do you mean? AFAIK, they have been fixed some time (and
releases) ago. If there are other bugs which remain, please make a bug report.
I have heard that there are some RS232 issues, but I don't know exactly what
they are. I never heard of filerequester issues in linux. BTW, as there are
different UIs for Linux (xaw, xaw3d, Gnome, ...), which one(s) is/are affected?
Why does everyone think that the VICE developers are all around and look at
every forum, every IRC chat or the like? Even if some do, they do not always
forward everything to the VICE Developers ML.
If you have some bug reports (descriptions how to reproduce would be good),
feel free to write to vice-devel .at. firenze.linux.it
Thanks for your support,
Spiro.
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