[Oberon] WinOberon on GitHub vs. WinOberon at ETHZ

[Alexander Ilin]

Hello, list!

  Bernhard Treutwein asked me a question about my WinOberon repository on GitHub, and he agreed to have my reply posted in the list in case someone has the same question. Below is his email and my reply.

> Dear Alexander,

> I stumbled once again over your WinOberon repository at GitHub.

> Just a curious question: There are quite some differences between
> the version at GitHub and the version available in Zurich
> (ftp://ftp.ethoberon.ethz.ch/ETHOberon/Win95NT/PlugIn/).
> Some files from Zurich are slightly newer (18.12.2010
> vs. 26.11.2010) many differ just in some small number of bytes.
> What was the reason for Emil Zeller to provide you yet another
> version.
> Is the version from Zurich in some way dysfuntional?

> regards
> -- 
>   Bernhard

  The short answer is: I guess Emil's changes were incorporated back into ETH at some point.

  Now, for the long answer.

  I have compared several WinOberon distributions, and here is my summary.

  Things I have compared ("tagged as" refer to my GitHub repository tags at https://github.com/AlexIljin/WinOberon):
  - [ tagged as v2.5 ] WinOberon v2.5, which back in the day consisted of WinOberon.zip and WinOberonFix.zip. In this distribution the Src/Win32.Kernel.Mod contains version string "Win32 2.5 (19.12.2004)";
  - [ tagged as v2.6exp ] WinOberon Experimental v2.6, which I received from Emil Zeller on or about 26.11.2010;
  - the latest WinOberon.zip contents today (22.02.2016) available from ETH FTP, dated 12.05.2011. In this archive the Src/Win32.Kernel.Mod contains version string "Win32 2.5 (18.12.2010)".

  Since versioning seems to be a bit of a mess, I'll refer to these archives not by numbers or dates, but as Old, EZ and Last respectively.

  I presume that versions EZ and Last are based on Old, which predates both of them. The question is in what relation EZ is to Last. More specifically, is Last a strict superset of EZ.

  To answer that question, I have analyzed the textual differences between the two versions, primarily comparing all of the *.Link, *.Mod, *.Text and *.Tool files, presuming that *.Obj, *.Exe, *.Dll, *.Oaf, *.Arc and *.Def files are automatically derived from the corresponding texts and are not introducing independent changes.

  Here's the summary of the changes introduced in Last compared to EZ:
  - Module V24Log: GetPar procedure updated, added GetMC, SetMC and ClearMC;
  - in Src/Win32.Kernel.Mod version changed from "Win32 2.5 (7.2.2009)" to "Win32 2.5 (18.12.2010)";
  - in Src/Win32.Threads.Mod CheckStacks procedure updated;
  - Src/RXA.Mod file removed;
  - Src/Win32.OLEFrames.Mod file removed;
  - Docu/HelloCon.Link file removed;
  - Src/Win32.DLL.Oberon.Link file removed;
  - Src/Win32.Oberon.Link file removed;
  - Src/Win32.Small.Oberon.Link file removed.

  All of the removed files were previously introduced to Old in the WinOberonFix.zip archive, and were present in EZ, but for some reason didn't make it to Last.

  Changes in modules V24Log and Win32.Threads don't undo, but build up on EZ's version.

  This leads me to believe that, apart from the missing files, Last is a strict superset of EZ.

  I have imported the current ETH version of WinOberon (ftp://ftp.ethoberon.ethz.ch/ETHOberon/Win95NT/PlugIn/WinOberon.zip) into my GitHub repository do eliminate the discrepancy, except I decided not to delete the removed files.

  I also committed the scripts I used with Git to perform textual comparisons of the Oberon sources.

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 Александр