open-watcom

Total joy to be using this albeit my concern is only C and DOS thus my overlap with the whole package is rather minimal. Back in the 2000s I used to dabble with the DOS port of gcc(great memories!) and after reading a bit about the source release of Doom, I got a version of the infamous WatcomC(v10.6 I think?) and was in awe of using the same compiler as the people of the golden 90ies(in terms of "bleeding edge" software). I think I primarily was amazed at the mapping of real addresses concerning ease of use(this was the reason that kinda pushed me away from DJGPP, albeit sharing data between DOS and the extender, used by interrupt routines, was in some cases easier with DJGPP... not sure though?!?). Still to this day, and more than ever, I fire up WatcomC and fool around. The inline assembler is also one heck of a tool. Big props to the people who have made openWatcom possible and are still refining it!

It works as well on Windows 10 as my old version of Watcom C did in the late '90s. I find it much more appealing for console programming than the bloated Visual Studio. The massive documentation and tools collection is a great resource. I recommend this compiler to beginners starting with classic texts like K&R *The C Programming Language*. It's far easier to get working than either Visual Studio or Cygwin/GCC, and includes a great full-screen debugger and numerous other tools. Best of all, it has thousands of pages of very detailed and *professional* documentation that explain every detail of the compiler and tools as well as the languages and libraries. Even non-Watcom users should consider downloading the complete documentation of the standard C/C++ libraries and classes. I'm not aware of any free resource that is comparable. The FORTRAN 77 compiler will be attractive both for legacy coding and to anyone wishing to learn the language in its "classic" form.

I've been using Watcom C/C++ since the mid 1990's. Thank God this masterpiece wasn't lost in the industry chaos and "designed by committee" insanity and Micro$oft's "let's lock 'em in" predation. I "bet the farm" on OS/2, on Watcom, and on the C++ language, and two of those three bets came through for me. As open source, the debugger became unstable. That appears to be fixed in this fork. What I like: (1) multiplatform. (2) open source. (3) simple, no-agenda copyleft license. (4) Tight, compact, efficient binaries. (5) Generated code that functions correctly. That is why IPDOS (tm) IdeaFarm (tm) Piggyback Distributed Operating System is strategically committed to Open Watcom.

Probably the nicest and most complete OpenSource toolset for the Win32API. Provides GUI editors for dialogs, strings, menus, accelerators, bitmaps, cursors, and icons. Provides a VI interface for the editor or allows the user to insert his own editor. Unlike other open source tool kits, this one just works.

Pretty nice improvements in v2.