xtc68

Cross compiler for QDOS C68 on POSIX platforms (and Windows).

This is a resurrection of the 1999-ish code base to compile on modern POSIX-like systems.

As of 2021-08-24, the codebase is 64bit clean. There is no longer any requirement to build 32bit executables, even on Windows.

Installation

You can either install a binary distribution for Linux, MacOS, Windows or build from source. For platforms where there is no binary distribution, build from source in required. Such platforms are:

Anything other than x86_64 (amd64) with Linux, MacOS and Windows.

The binary installations are tar or Zip files, with the following structure:

xtc68/bin
xtc68/share/qdos
xtc68/share/qdos/etc
xtc68/share/qdos/include
xtc68/share/qdos/lib

You should then install a c68 runtime into the xtc68/share/qdos/include (header files) and xtc68/share/qdos/lib (libraries and startup files).

Runtime

You need the C68 runtime binary distribution. A good place to start looking is https://dilwyn.qlforums.co.uk/c/. If runtime disk1 is installed under support, the sdk-install.sh script will install a usable environment, such that:

qcc -o hw hw.c

will generate a QDOS executable, where hw.c is a trivial, standard "Hello World" application, assuming the installation directory $(prefix)/bin is on $PATH.

Note that it is not purpose of this repository to provide a QDOS C68 development environment, nor does it offer any help for QDOS development; it mere maintains a cross compiler.

Runtime path resolution

The search path for QDOS header files and libraries is:

Under the share/qdos directory where share is at the same level as the binary bin directory (i.e. as distributed binaries)
Under the directory defined at build time $prefix/share/qdos; this is not set for the binary distributions.
In directories defined by the environment variables QLINC (header files) and QLLIB (libraries).
In the fallback directories under /usr/local/share/qdos

So, if you unzip the supplied Windows Zip file to C:\ (you now have C:\xtc68 and sub-directories) and then added the C68 header files to C:\xtc68\share\qdos\include and the C68 libraries to C:\xtc68\share\qdos\lib (i.e. into the default directories the Zip file has conveniently provided), finally add C:\xtc68\bin to the PATH environment variable; it all should "just work".

> # Powershell
> # Assume we have a trival "hello world" hw.c
> $env:PATH += "C:\xtc68\bin;"
> qcc -O -o helloworld hw.c
helloworld: dataspace 904 (388)
>

Building

On most POSIX (like) systems (Linux, *BSD, MacOS, Msys) to build and install the executables.

You need a native C compiler, bash, meson and ninja. It is recommended that you use clang or GCC >= 12.0. Specifically, if your GCC is older than GCC 12, you must use clang.

Modern practice on essentially "sole user" systems is to install under ~/.local, with ~/.local/bin appended to the PATH, so:

meson setup build --prefix=~/.local --strip
ninja install -C build

To use clang, e.g. for older / broken GCC:

## if necessary, first install clang ...
CC=clang meson setup _clbuild --prefix=~/.local --strip
ninja -C _clbuild install

To install the QDOS includes and libraries

./sdk-install.sh [~/.local]

If the optional --prefix directory is omitted, /usr/local is assumed.

If you really want to install in /usr/local:

# build and install the executables in /usr/local (default)
meson setup build --strip
ninja -C build
sudo ninja install -C build
sudo ./sdk-install.sh

Note sudo is required for a non-root user to install to /usr/local.

Cross compiling

The cross/mkcross.sh script supports cross-compilation hosted on Linux for MacOS and Windows (as well as generating the Linux archive). Note that the MacOS recipe has a dependency on a local path for the MacOS cross-compiler).

Integration with native make (i.e. GNU Make)

The installation provides ql.mk, which it will copy to $PREFIX/share/qdos/etc/ql.mk

In your QDOS project Makefile, as the first line (.local prefix install)

# local install, alas $$HOME is not expanded here ..
include /home/USERNAME/.local/share/qdos/etc/ql.mk

# System install
include /usr/local/qdos/etc/ql.mk

mkdir ~/.config/xtc68
cp $PREFIX/share/qdos/etc/ql.mk ~/.config/xtc68/
# then in a Makefile
include /home/USERNAME/.config/xtc68/ql.mak

Now you can easily use GNU Make to build your QDOS project.