Harald Boegeholz writes:
>
> I have just acquired GAP and have no experience with it. Even before
> trying it at all I thought it might be nice to have it working on my
> PC under OS/2 2.0.
>
> Has anybody ported GAP to OS/2 2.0?

Not as far as I know.

Let me tell you what I did so far:

I compiled GAP 3.2 using the emx0.8f port of gcc. Since emx provides a
very unix-like environment, I used sysunix.c and SYS_IS_USG. After
changing only about 4 lines, GAP compiled without problems and is now
working under OS/2 2.0, including the command line editor. Since emx
produces bound executables for DOS and OS/2 2.0, I am wondering why
the DOS port of GAP was done using DJ Delorie's gcc / DOS extender and
not emx.

Basically because I didn't have an OS/2 system.

How do the emx produced DOS executables behave? What expanded
memory/swapping protocols will they use? How fast are they? Apart
from the kbhit() problem identified a few weeks ago, the DJGPP
executables seem to work pretty well in a variety of environments.

Some work remains to be done, I admit. At least the command line
editing should be changed so that the cursor keys can be used. Before
spending any time on this I'd like some feedback: Has anybody already
done this?

Again, not as far as I know. The DJGPP port (sysdos.c or whatever
it`s called now) uses various arrow keys and so on, but I doubnt
that you could use the same code.
>
> To the GAP developers: Wouldn't it be much nicer to have a single
> executable of GAP for DOS and OS/2?
>
I would certainly think so, but there seem to be far more DOS than
OS/2 users, so DOS performance is an important consideration.

Steve Linton