🚀 go-pugleaf

  I have a large Dos application which I developed using MSC 6. Having
read the review in Microsoft Systems Journal I was quite excited
to receive MS C/C++ 7. Unfortunately it turned out to be a disappointment.
I am programming for Dos, using C only.

- First of all, the marketing section forgot to point out that you cannot
  combine p-code and overlays in one program. Even Microsoft Technical
  Support was surprised about this. It seemed ideal: p-code part of the
  root, overlay the separate tasks. I would be happy if someone proved
  me wrong on this point.
- The Exepack option (LINK) doesn't work with overlaid programs, they
  just hang at start-up.
- Codeview keeps on hanging on overlaid programs (I'm using the new
  dynamic overlay system, called MOVE). It hangs when CV tries to load the
  executable, but sometimes works when changing which files have
  debugging on. Usually the program works normally,
  but on one occasion it hang on exit (which made my think there's 
  something wrong with CVPACK). 
  I installed 386max, and tried it under Windows 3.1 as well ("This program 
  has violated system integrity due to an invalid general protection fault
  and will be terminated").
  This is the worst bit, I cannot write programs without a debugger, and
  the program takes too much memory without overlays.
- I didn't manage to get the function level linking (/Gy) working.
  With function level linking, all functions end up in a COMDAT
  segment, instead of a file_TEXT segment. This should enable the
  linker to throw out unused functions, and gives the option to
  allocate individual functions to an overlay (this is what I tried). 
  I gave up after a while, because after the previous problems I 
  tended to blame Microsoft rather than myself.
  It brought up a question: Does anybody know how the linker resolves
  functions which have the same name (it doesn't seem to make a difference
  whether functions are static or not).

My conclusion is that the compiler seems to be fine, but that the tools
are pretty unstable. I hope that the Windows tools are better.

To end on a positive note: I have a 32-bit version of the program using
Watcom C 9.0/386. It took a little time to convert the assembler part of
my program, but it's all working fine. No problems linking or debugging at all.
My only wish is that they make the debugger interface more similar to Codeview. 

I'd be very interested to hear other people's experience.

Jurgen Doornik