[Oberon] Project Oberon 2013 on GitHub?

[Paul Onyschuk]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2014 11:11:32 +0200
eas lab <lab.eas at gmail.com> wrote:

> AFAIK PO2013 in not a *new* language, but rather, new in combining
> hardware and software, in a minimalist educational project.
> 
> Also ETHO has a Win version & perhaps Mac.
> So, there's hardly a lack of multi-platform ETHO facilities.

Big difference with PO2013 is that second part of book is meaningful:
description of compiler applies and description of computer is also
nice addition.  You can also enjoy "Compiler Construction" to its
fullest potential.  It is hard to overlook that.

Emulator is also significant, since it lowers the barrier for using new
Oberon.  You can get familiar with both system and programming
language, before buying FPGA.  It is nice thing to have from promotion
perspective I guess.

ETHO and ETH V4 is kinda portable.  It works only under x86 (which is
slowly suppressed by x86_64 and I expect that Linux distributions will
slowly abandon multilib or/and x86 altogether in near future) and
there are still problems with e.g. running it under newer Linux.
Loader/bootstrap of ETH V4, which is written in C doesn't work when
compiled with newer GCC/Binutils - it segfaults.  The most portable
version is probably Native ETHO, since it can be used under QEMU.

Overall PO2013 and new emulator don't require so much hassle. 

> Apparently there are now more ARM:*nix than WinTel computers in the
> world, so it would be interesting to hear from someone who *DID* run
> PO2013, or other version of ETHO, on ARM.

At least two people reported that PO2013 runs just fine under RPi.
I posted information about building it for Android, I tested it on
tablet with Allwinner SoC - it runs, but changes are needed, since
input handling is completely different on devices with touch screen.

Previously you could get DOS Oberon running under DOSBox - that was the
fastest method for running Oberon related systems under ARM. Other
option was running full x86 hardware emulator like QEMU and under that
Oberon - which is very slow on ARM.

-- 
Paul Onyschuk