Re: [MiNT] FreeMiNT binaries and CPU specific versions

[Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 8:57 PM, Jo Even Skarstein <joska@online.no> wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Jul 2011 06:42:06 +0200, Paul Wratt <paul.wratt@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> There is one fundamental error with this approach: Scripts ;) Way to
>>> complex and s-l-o-w, and it's about as userfriendly as a square wheel.
>>> It's much easier with an optional loader in AUTO and the actual kernel
>>> in $SYSDIR. You don't have to mess with symlinks (which btw needs MiNT
>>> to work on a real machine, so the loader will never find $SYSDIR), the
>>> loader does everything for you without a single script or config-file.
>>
>> where is your working solution Jo?
>
> I don't have one, simply because I ran into the same problem as you. You
> can't tell MiNT where $SYSDIR is located. I have made a very simple loader
> that's located in AUTO. It scans <boot>:\mint and it's subfolders for all
> occurences of mint*.prg and presents these in a very simple menu. This is
> working, but currently there are two big problems:
>
> 1. As I said, you can't tell MiNT where $SYSDIR is. So this approach only
> works when choosing between releases or between release and current. Not
> *that* useful to me as I primarily want to test the latest build and keep
> the latest good one too.
> 2. With this approach, mint*.prg is located in $SYSDIR. The problem with
> this is that MiNT looks for itself in AUTO when it runs programs from the
> AUTO-folder. It has to do this to determine which programs to run - programs
> located before mint.prg has already been started by TOS.
>
> Both problems can be fixed. There are of course other issues with this
> loader that makes it unsuitable for release (extremely crude menu, no error
> checks...) but I only wrote it to confirm that MiNT can be run from other
> folders than AUTO without problems.
>
> Jo Even
>
kudos on the effort, you should have posted about these issues before
now (others are also working on loaders, so things like menu stuff
could have already been sorted)

I think passing $SYSDIR is a good idea (options are good). The problem
is that its is the search path in mint itself that is the main issue.

What good is parsing the SYSDIR is you cant remember which mint.prg
and which mint folder goes together.

as much as i hate the idea of what it implies (coding and cvs wise) I
believe that to pre-pend a build specific path at compile time is the
easiest solution, at least that way the only thing you have to
remember is SYSDIR, not what it should be, and you can then have any
number of mint programs started from an auto/boot loader, with related
folders in C:\mint

maybe what should be investigated is the use of setting SYSDIR at
compile time (that gets pre-pended to -cur). I think this is already
possible (but dont quote me on that). Maybe too the use of SYSROOT at
compile time to change the default C:\mint setting..

maybe Alan and Vincent have more info related to the above paragraph..
but any of the above fixes/additions would solve Jo's (and others)
problem as well as for users..

Paul