6 ms·

Does anyone know why they haven't released a new version going on 8 years now even though it looks like it's been continually worked on according to http://sour

Does anyone know why they haven't released a new version going on 8 years now even though it looks like it's been continually worked on according to http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt http://source.dosbox.com/dosboxsvn.txt?

unixhero 9y ago
Yes, they are stuck with technical debt which, let's say, they cannot repay. Therefore further development on it is really difficult. This was stated by the developer in an interview some 5 years ago.
- jefftime 9y ago
  Do you happen to have a link to that interview? I'd love to read about it
  - ebcode 9y ago
    not sure if this is the interview OP is referring to, but the timeframe is right: https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- bookofjoe 9y ago
  What is "technical debt?"
  - nurettin 9y ago
    It is a term used by people with hindsight to depict bad decision making in programming that needs a lot of fixing and refactoring later on. And to insinuate they are more cautious.
    - capsulecorp 9y ago
      It doesn't have to be with hindsight, you can forecast technical debt.
      - opcenter 9y ago
        So true. Often technical debt is intentionally taken on as a calculated risk to get to market faster with the intention of fixing it later. Fixing it later rarely happens though. In my experience it either ends up being someone else's problem or you just live with it.
    - psyc 9y ago
      It's very hard to avoid tech debt if you're under constant and severe deadline pressure. But I don't consider it at all hard to avoid otherwise. To me, avoiding debt can be summarized as not taking shortcuts. This shortcut would save time right now, but you know its a hack that makes an abstraction leak? Don't do it. You know an approach is going to cause problems down the line, but you just can't think of a better way? Again, don't do it. See if something comes to mind later. Wrote and tested a bunch of code that seems to work, but there's an itch in the back of your mind saying you haven't thought the problem all the way through? Don't check it in. One might think this sort of approach is paralyzing or something, but in my experience it's extremely empowering over the lifetime of a software project.
      - jimktrains2 9y ago
        You act like you always know what will become debt and even then what will become important debt.
        psyc 9y ago
        We don’t know much. We have to make calls. What can I say? I’m old and I have my heuristics.
  - pmarreck 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt basically it's when a bunch of bad but seemingly-innocuous coding design decisions accumulate and compound each other multiplicatively over time, to the point that any change of the code is far more likely to break something than the new feature is worth Or as I stated at a previous job where I complained about the 40-minute-long test-suite run time that was bogging everyone down, "the road to a 40 minute long test suite is paved with a couple extra seconds here and there with every new code commit"
    - bookofjoe 9y ago
      Clear and to the point for this non-techie: thank you!
    - qwerty456127 9y ago
      Why not just make a conscious decision to stop developing new features and dedicate all the effort to refactoring then?
      - CalvinRodo 9y ago
        That is the solution, but sometimes it's a hard decision to make.
      - khedoros1 9y ago
        A few reasons. If you're an employee building a product for a company, management's always going to push for features, features, features, to keep the customers happy, and to keep up with the competition. Time spent refactoring is an investment in the future, but management tends to be more shortsighted than that. By the time that you really can't add more to the program, it's years down the line, and they've probably been considering pulling the plug anyhow. In my own projects, it's often fun to keep adding things until I hit a roadblock, then spend a couple weeks reworking stuff. It's satisfying to add new features, but architectural maintenance feels like treading water. So, I'd guess that the answer is somewhere between "outside factors dictate that there isn't time" and "we haven't decided to make the time, even though we could". There's an interview with the two main developers here, from 5 years ago: https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ It sounds like they ran out of energy to really rearchitect the whole thing, or build a new one from scratch.
pjc50 9y ago
DOS isn't getting any newer...
- yakk0 9y ago
  actually, it kinda is. FreeDOS has added a lot of nice features over the last few years. http://www.freedos.org/ http://www.freedos.org/
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Wonder if one could get a modern browser going on FreeDOS somehow...
    - UncleSlacky 9y ago
      The Arachne browser was last updated in 2013, and its code is freely available - it might make a good starting point: http://www.glennmcc.org/ http://www.glennmcc.org/
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        At this point in time i suspect it would be easier to port webkit over in some form...
- khedoros1 9y ago
  Emulation's difficult, even for well-known platforms. Dosbox emulates a large variety of hardware, quirks in various DOS versions, and runs on a ton of platforms, but it doesn't do any of those things absolutely perfectly, and there's room for improvement in its hardware support. Plus, compiler and environmental changes need occasional maintenance.
- O1111OOO 9y ago
  There's also NightKernel[0]... "The Night kernel is a 32-bit drop-in replacement for the original 16-bit kernel of the FreeDOS operating system. It uses linear memory addressing and operates in protected mode on the Intel x86 architecture. The typical user will retain compatibility with their DOS applications and gain protected mode abilities such as task switching between applications..." At it's infancy but you can add RSS[1] to follow the discussion. [0] https://github.com/mercury0x000d/NightKernel https://github.com/mercury0x000d/NightKernel [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/night-dos-kernel/msgs/rss.xml?num=15 https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/night-dos-kernel/msgs/r... More feed options here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/night-dos-kernel https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/night-dos-kerne...

unixhero 9y ago

Yes, they are stuck with technical debt which, let's say, they cannot repay. Therefore further development on it is really difficult. This was stated by the developer in an interview some 5 years ago.

jefftime 9y ago
Do you happen to have a link to that interview? I'd love to read about it
- ebcode 9y ago
  not sure if this is the interview OP is referring to, but the timeframe is right: https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bookofjoe 9y ago
What is "technical debt?"
- nurettin 9y ago
  It is a term used by people with hindsight to depict bad decision making in programming that needs a lot of fixing and refactoring later on. And to insinuate they are more cautious.
  - capsulecorp 9y ago
    It doesn't have to be with hindsight, you can forecast technical debt.
    - opcenter 9y ago
      So true. Often technical debt is intentionally taken on as a calculated risk to get to market faster with the intention of fixing it later. Fixing it later rarely happens though. In my experience it either ends up being someone else's problem or you just live with it.
  - psyc 9y ago
    It's very hard to avoid tech debt if you're under constant and severe deadline pressure. But I don't consider it at all hard to avoid otherwise. To me, avoiding debt can be summarized as not taking shortcuts. This shortcut would save time right now, but you know its a hack that makes an abstraction leak? Don't do it. You know an approach is going to cause problems down the line, but you just can't think of a better way? Again, don't do it. See if something comes to mind later. Wrote and tested a bunch of code that seems to work, but there's an itch in the back of your mind saying you haven't thought the problem all the way through? Don't check it in. One might think this sort of approach is paralyzing or something, but in my experience it's extremely empowering over the lifetime of a software project.
    - jimktrains2 9y ago
      You act like you always know what will become debt and even then what will become important debt.
      - psyc 9y ago
        We don’t know much. We have to make calls. What can I say? I’m old and I have my heuristics.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_debt basically it's when a bunch of bad but seemingly-innocuous coding design decisions accumulate and compound each other multiplicatively over time, to the point that any change of the code is far more likely to break something than the new feature is worth Or as I stated at a previous job where I complained about the 40-minute-long test-suite run time that was bogging everyone down, "the road to a 40 minute long test suite is paved with a couple extra seconds here and there with every new code commit"
  - bookofjoe 9y ago
    Clear and to the point for this non-techie: thank you!
  - qwerty456127 9y ago
    Why not just make a conscious decision to stop developing new features and dedicate all the effort to refactoring then?
    - CalvinRodo 9y ago
      That is the solution, but sometimes it's a hard decision to make.
    - khedoros1 9y ago
      A few reasons. If you're an employee building a product for a company, management's always going to push for features, features, features, to keep the customers happy, and to keep up with the competition. Time spent refactoring is an investment in the future, but management tends to be more shortsighted than that. By the time that you really can't add more to the program, it's years down the line, and they've probably been considering pulling the plug anyhow. In my own projects, it's often fun to keep adding things until I hit a roadblock, then spend a couple weeks reworking stuff. It's satisfying to add new features, but architectural maintenance feels like treading water. So, I'd guess that the answer is somewhere between "outside factors dictate that there isn't time" and "we haven't decided to make the time, even though we could". There's an interview with the two main developers here, from 5 years ago: https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ https://sourceforge.net/blog/potm-201301/ It sounds like they ran out of energy to really rearchitect the whole thing, or build a new one from scratch.

pjc50 9y ago

DOS isn't getting any newer...

yakk0 9y ago
actually, it kinda is. FreeDOS has added a lot of nice features over the last few years. http://www.freedos.org/ http://www.freedos.org/
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Wonder if one could get a modern browser going on FreeDOS somehow...
  - UncleSlacky 9y ago
    The Arachne browser was last updated in 2013, and its code is freely available - it might make a good starting point: http://www.glennmcc.org/ http://www.glennmcc.org/
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      At this point in time i suspect it would be easier to port webkit over in some form...
khedoros1 9y ago
Emulation's difficult, even for well-known platforms. Dosbox emulates a large variety of hardware, quirks in various DOS versions, and runs on a ton of platforms, but it doesn't do any of those things absolutely perfectly, and there's room for improvement in its hardware support. Plus, compiler and environmental changes need occasional maintenance.
O1111OOO 9y ago
There's also NightKernel[0]... "The Night kernel is a 32-bit drop-in replacement for the original 16-bit kernel of the FreeDOS operating system. It uses linear memory addressing and operates in protected mode on the Intel x86 architecture. The typical user will retain compatibility with their DOS applications and gain protected mode abilities such as task switching between applications..." At it's infancy but you can add RSS[1] to follow the discussion. [0] https://github.com/mercury0x000d/NightKernel https://github.com/mercury0x000d/NightKernel [1] https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/night-dos-kernel/msgs/rss.xml?num=15 https://groups.google.com/forum/feed/night-dos-kernel/msgs/r... More feed options here: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/night-dos-kernel https://groups.google.com/forum/#!aboutgroup/night-dos-kerne...