forum.defence-force.org

I am currently working on an Oric IDE, with the idea to make it cross-platform one day (because some people prefer Linux or MacOS).

As you may noticed, I am in Delphi/pascal dev, and I started the project in Lazarus that is cross-platform.
Script plugins will, for sure, be very important, it makes things quick to change, adapt, fix and brings modularity and flexibility...
More over, all the little utilities could be rewritten in such a scripting language.

DOS Batch has the inconvenient :
- to be only DOS/Windows compatible.
- It's ugly to maintain, it lacks procedures and functions in order to create some libraries.

What scripting language could be used instead ? There are a few candidates :
- Pascal script : very well supported in the lazarus environment, it is object oriented, and everything is possible. This script language is very "readable", but the drawback is that Oricians seems to prefer C or BASIC kinds of language. Major problem : it is not well documented.
- Python, interesting, widely adopted but difficult to embed.
- Lua, easily embedable, well documented.
- yabasic : well documented, BASIC syntax, fast learning curve, only for Windows and Linux
- nubscript : well documented, BASIC syntax, fast learning curve, binaries for Linux. Difficult to build for windows (I managed do do it, but it was so painfull), same for MacOS (sources : https://github.com/eantcal/nubscript)
- Linux shell : Works with Windows 10 (https://www.howtogeek.com/249966/how-to ... indows-10/ )
- PowerShell : Windows, MacOS and Linux (https://github.com/PowerShell/PowerShell)

I would like to have your thoughts about this, what would you choose ?

I vote Lua. I've used it in projects for years and it is definitely the shortest and .. imho .. sweetest path to success. For those who haven't learned it yet, 'tis very easy to learn. And as a language: much power. Do not underestimate the value of meta tables! And, it has the least load. You can probably integrate it into things in a heartbeat.

Very easy to extract the platform stuff into a table, set up paths to .EXE's/.app's/.bin's, and automate cross-platform builds.

Anyway, just my 2c.

I have lot to say... but in short +1 for Lua.

OK, I have a squeletton for the IDE, but, most important, we have a code highlighter for the Oric BASIC !
Just find something working on the Internet for the 1st Generation of BASIC, with line numbers, with or without spaces, and with completion...

I wish to thank Edson on the Lazarus forum for his precious help and his "SynEditFacil",
the story is here : https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/in ... 910.0.html

Although I salute the effort and initiative, I must say that a dedicated new IDE would have to be very feature complete to move me away from the ones I already use and appreciate (that is Visual Studio, Sublime Text 3).

As a retro-coder I would probably more interested in OSDK/Oric plugins for my existing IDEs than by a new IDE.

But obviously I am not going to stop you if you think this is a worthy endeavor.

<I'm following the discussion, I'll eventually give some feedback when it gets farther/more people chiming in>

Hi,

I know almost next to nothing about Lua, but it seems to get a lot of traction in gaming, and I've always meant to learn it, and finally, amongst all options it seems to be the best one for me.

So, +1 for Lua too


Python would have been a good candidate too, another one to consider also would be RUby, as both are cross-platform too, but maybe more difficult to embed than Lua (and personally I'm not too fond of Python syntax, but that's just me).

To me, all other options either lack cross-platform abilities (Powershell, Linux shell... although this has changed with Windows 10) or seem a bit too exotic and not very future-proof (Pascalscript, yabasic, nubscript).

Now, it will require quite a lot of work to change OSDK to be able to change existing scripts and plug a scripting engine I believe...

laurentd75 wrote: ↑Sun Nov 04, 2018 1:40 pm Now, it will require quite a lot of work to change OSDK to be able to change existing scripts and plug a scripting engine I believe...

I don't think that would require a lot of work, just some stuff on the side.

At the core, in the OSDK you have separate folders for the libraries, macros, samples, emulators, roms, and finally the "bin" folder with all the executables, this structure has not changed since the first version about 17 years ago.

Nobody is forced to use the batch files: mmu and jylam did their own makefile based way of using the tools, there's nothing really complicated there, which is why it was doable in BAT in first place.

That being said, if this idea goes farther, imo this should go the way LINUX work, with the Kernel on one side, and "distros" on the other hand: The Distros pickup what they like, and they package it the way they want.

I'm personally not interested by an IDE or some scripting features, but I can see why some people would like that

If some of you want to make your own repackaged version of the OSDK, you are totally free to do it, after all most of the OSDK is a repackaged version of the old SDK made by Fabrice, Vangelis and Alexios back in the days.

So what I suggest is the following:
- The OSDK on OSDK.org will stay with the same feature set as it currently has
- As long as this does not make my own version harder to maintain/less compatible/fatter, I'm not against doing small changes here and there if it makes it easier to implement your own features
- I'm not opposed in having the OSDK site point to the new releases of the IDE/SCRIPT system so people can easily find it and know of the new releases
- Find some naming that makes it clear what people are using, I would really dislike having people say that "I'm using the OSDK and something's not working" if they are using the IDE version, I don't have time to spare to waste it on chasing issues in other people's projects