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AROS Issues and How-Can-I-Help?

Swift Griggs

Posts 5
22 Feb 2018 17:20


I'm a C developer and a budding ASM coder as well (but not very skilled in 68k ASM just yet). I'm looking to hack on AROS a bit, but I've run into some issues getting started. Is AROS still alive? I notice that there are some commits to the source tree relatively often and this year. However, I requested to join the developer mailing lists and never got a reply. Just crickets. I notice that most of the website is really out of date and the IRC channel is empty/dead every time I check.  Is this just bad timing on my part? Is anyone still working on AROS and if they are, are they folks who care about the 68k port, or just x86 folks? What is the health of the project in general? I'm not trying to be critical. I want to help, but it's been challenging so far. I figure someone here might know any surviving AROS devs.


Wawa T

Posts 695
22 Feb 2018 17:37


Have you checked your spam folder? Ill try to Ping someone responsible otherwise. We had new members lately so it should work. Can you Name your Identification you tried to Register unser?


Nicolas Sipieter
(Needs Verification)
Posts 115/ 1
22 Feb 2018 17:56


to answer some of your questions:

- yes aros is still alive. there's frequent commits on the sources and there's a weekly progress report effort being made available on aros-exec forum and then often crossposted on other various amiga forums too.

- i haven't checked the irc channel so i can't talk about it, but there's frequent activity on aros-exec.org forums.

- afaik, the 68k branch is a little bit less popular than the main x86 branch but from time to time the 68k branch too receive some love from various devs. so yes 68k branch is also being cared about.

- about getting on the dev mailing list: wawa is in touch with the team (it's opensource, so various people from all over the world) maintaining and developing aros, he will probably be able to relay your voice to them so they can hear your desire to come and help.
and help is always welcome.


Swift Griggs

Posts 5
22 Feb 2018 18:08


I used my normal gmail email address (does the list block gmail by chance?). I just tried to re-register for the developer list and it acted like I'd never registered. I used my alias "inflammasome" as my "name". Is it a real-name-only list? I checked my spam folder and didn't find anything with "AROS" in there, but since I just gave it a fresh try, we'll see what happens. Thanks for your help, Wawa.


Swift Griggs

Posts 5
22 Feb 2018 18:12


Thanks for your information and courteous reply, Nicolas. I've tried again with the dev-list and we'll see what happens. I've also located the aros-exec forum with the weekly progress reports. So, again, thanks for the tips. That's much more up-to-date than what's shown on the main AROS website.


Nicolas Sipieter
(Needs Verification)
Posts 115/ 1
22 Feb 2018 18:48


they probably get the subscription mails sent to an account that is not checked often, i wouldn't worry much about that, especialy since wawa  offered to help.
aros-exec site is where most aros activity take place. if you don't hear back from wawa or anyone else after a day or two, if i were you, i would try posting same request you posted here but on aros-exec.




Wawa T

Posts 695
22 Feb 2018 20:44


i have just posted an inquiry on the subject to the list. meanwhile  if i can be of any likely technically limited assistance, you can count on me.


Swift Griggs

Posts 5
22 Feb 2018 20:54


Thanks fellas. I was just able to get subscribed to the dev list (yay!). So, I'll lurk there a while to get a feel for the cadence and style of the work being done. What I've been working on is networking code in AmiTCP and I'm also working on a block cache Handler overlay for prefetching read operations. That's where I've been working on AmigaOS 3.x and maybe it'd be useful for the AROS folks, as well. We'll see. Thanks again, Wawa and Nicolas for your input and help.


Wawa T

Posts 695
06 Mar 2018 13:58


i just wanted to inform you guys that i have managed to get odyssey building for aros x86 abi v1 within aros source tree/with aros toolchain.

briefly tested the application works as expected.

this may be quite significant, in this respect that aros toolchain allows to build software for multitude of targets, amiga-m68k inclusive. most of dependencies already compile for that platform. as far as im aware the serious problem may rest with icu library.

now. on my x86 linux hosted test environment odyssey needs about 100mb to run. it is less than i expected. considering this odysssey might even be sufficient for moderate usage within current vampire specifications, who knows.

posts 9