[changes] 07/10/2021

New features and project activity between releases
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dom
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[changes] 07/10/2021

Post by dom »

This update is very much delayed. I've been suffering from an extended meh period so really haven't felt like doing much. Winter is coming though so things might change.

Regardless, there's been a few changes over the past 5 months or so.

Docker image discontinued

Dockerhub made it a lot harder for projects to build for free, so the nightly build has been discontinued. The Dockerfile is still present and can be used to build an image.

sccz80/debugging

Thanks to @desertkun there's the beginnings of symbolic debugging for sccz80 programs. Line stepping, function leaving etc is working. The main missing feature is the "print" command, however local variables can be inspected.

An interesting extension is the z88dk-gdb command. This allows programs running in emulators (or indeed real hardware) that provide a gdbserver stub to be debugged. A great usecase for this is Mame which supports many of the targets supported by z88dk

sccz80

Of course there's been bug fixes and there's also been quite a lot of optimisations that have been added.

zsdcc

zsdcc has been updated to r12555 to squash some bugs.

(classic) <features.h>

Ever wondered what capabilities a classic target has? Wonder no more. <features.h> provides 25 preprocessor checkable feature flags to aid porting. The source spreadsheet can be found here: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/blob/mas ... atures.csv which is a much easier read than the auto-generated header file.

(classic) FAT pixels

Some of the targets provide a 2:1 pixel ratio where pixels are taller than they are wider. The fatpix flag (gfx_set_fatpix) doubles the width of each pixel so that they appear square. It's available for the appropriate screen modes on the SAM Coupe, TS2068, ZX Next, Multi8, PC88

(classic) z88

Somewhat ironically, the z88 hasn't really been kept up-to-date. With OZv5 entering the testing phase, z88dk can now create compressed applications and ShellV5 applications and there's also been a few minor bug fixes.

(newlib) +vgl target removed

The classic +gl target provided more features and since +vgl was rarely used it made sense to just to provide one library choice for these machines.

(newlib) 8085/rc2014

This target is being brought up and allows z88dk to generate applications that can run on the new 8085 card for the rc2014. It's an interesting target in that it's a fusion of newlib and classic and is helping to show how we can merge the libraries together.

We've also just merged and de-duplicated the compiler support routines which is another step on library merging path.
cborn
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Re: [changes] 07/10/2021

Post by cborn »

Hi, thanks for the update.
i tried to find a way on github to update
git checkout master
https://gist.github.com/santisbon/a1a60 ... 986ae5d3ca
but on my PC i only get the remark
" fatal: not a git repository (or any of the parent directories): .git "

do you know the correct magic words ??
cheers
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dom
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Re: [changes] 07/10/2021

Post by dom »

I don't know what state your system is in, so it's probably easiest to start afresh.

Instructions are here: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/wiki/ins ... inux--unix

It may be easier to use a snap installation: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/wiki/Snap-usage
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RobertK
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Re: [changes] 07/10/2021

Post by RobertK »

dom wrote: Thu Oct 07, 2021 9:15 pm (classic) <features.h>

Ever wondered what capabilities a classic target has? Wonder no more. <features.h> provides 25 preprocessor checkable feature flags to aid porting. The source spreadsheet can be found here: https://github.com/z88dk/z88dk/blob/mas ... atures.csv which is a much easier read than the auto-generated header file.
Very helpful, thanks. A small error that I have found in the list: the standard Galaksija target (__GAL__) should not have PSG AY sound, while the improved Galaksija Plus model (__GALPLUSHIRES__) should, their values in the list are inverted.
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dom
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Re: [changes] 07/10/2021

Post by dom »

RobertK wrote: Sun Oct 10, 2021 8:02 amVery helpful, thanks. A small error that I have found in the list: the standard Galaksija target (__GAL__) should not have PSG AY sound, while the improved Galaksija Plus model (__GALPLUSHIRES__) should, their values in the list are inverted.
Sorted, if that's the only mistake in 3000+ entries I'll be very happy!
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