This file documents the GNUish MSDOS project, which has the purpose of providing the feeling of a GNUish environment to MSDOS users.

Copyright (C) 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.

Introduction
************

This is the MSDOS.info file for the GNUish MSDOS project, which has been last updated 20 January 1993.

You can retrieve a copy of this file by anonymous ftp from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38] in directory pub/gnu/MicrosPorts, as file MSDOS.texinfo for the Texinfo source and file MSDOS.info for an already formatted Info version.

Please help the community by kindly reporting all errors or omissions in this document; for doing so, email to pinard@iro.umontreal.ca. You might also want to contact other authors or contributors: a list of email addresses is given elsewhere in this document (see Contributors Addresses).

GNUish MSDOS was first organized with small IBM PC's in mind, that is, 8088 and 80286 based systems.  For 80386 or 80486 based systems, you should rather take a close look at DJ Delorie's works and derivatives; these ports have their own set of mailing lists and distribution points. See cc, for more information.  For OS/2 ports, people should follow the works of Kai Uwe Rommel and Eberhard Mattes; I've also heard that many OS/2 ports could be easily made usable under MSDOS with a special link step on OS/2.

This document is the work of various people, collected by Francois Pinard.  The FSF disclaimer (see Project Definition) is from Richard Stallman.

This document contains the following sections:

Project Definition
******************

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is not directly interested in integrating or maintaining ports of GNU software to MSDOS, because of limited resources.  These activities take time away from finishing a complete standalone GNU, which FSF and many in the GNU Project considers much more important.

However, the organized distribution of such ports started, a few years ago, under the name GNUish MSDOS project.  The overall idea is to provide a GNU like environment for MSDOS, easy to get, and easy to install, as far as possible.  It contains both MSDOS ports of GNU software, as well as MSDOS replacements for non-ported GNU software.

The GNUish MSDOS project wants to consider itself as part of the GNU project, rather than a mere aggregation of binaries.  The non-GNU replacements are expected to somewhat comply with the GNU spirit and standards.  Ideally, all code should be under the GNU General Public License, should try conforming to the GNU coding standards, and also be fully ANSI.  The programs should be such that MSDOS users can be convinced of the virtues of free software!

The GNU General Public License article 3a) requires that the complete source code be available where programs are distributed in object code or executable form.  For convenience, ready-to-execute binaries are also provided for those who do not have the necessary compilers, or do not feel like using them.

When several ports of the same tool exist, one of them has been selected for inclusion in this documentation.  This does not means that the selected port is the best possible, it means however that the port seems to be good.  Nobody should feel offended by any selection.  Questions regarding the GNUish MSDOS project should be directed to the mailing list:

     help-gnu-msdos@sun.soe.clarkson.edu

See Project Mailing Lists, for how to subscribe.

The GNUish MSDOS project originated from Thorsten Ohl.  It has been moderated by Thorsten from its beginning and for a long while.  Thorsten originally thought than, giving the project a solid initial impulse, it would bring enough enthousiasm so other programmers will share the porting duties.  It now seems that the enthousiasm was more on the users' side than the programmers' side.  In these days, many parts of GNUish MSDOS are almost completely dormant, and most products are quite old relative to the current GNU versions.  Notably alive, however, are Mike Brennan's mawk, then Len Reed and Stuart Phillips ports of Perl.

On the 80386/80486 side, DJ Delorie astonishing work on GNU C/C++ gave a new momentum for other MSDOS ports.  Besides a variety of libraries, we should especially underline the Manabu Higashida and Hirano Satoshi port of GNU Emacs to MSDOS.

Legal Conditions
****************

Some tools are possibly dangerous if you do not thoroughly understand their usage (v.g. rm -r *).  You ought to know what you are doing. YOU USE THESE TOOLS AT YOUR OWN RISK.  You were warned!

All these programs are free software; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 1, or (at your option) any later version.

These programs are distributed in the hope that they will be useful, BUT WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY WHATSOEVER, without even the implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.  See the GNU General Public License (the file COPYING) for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with GNUish MSDOS programs; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA or e-mail to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu.

Distribution on Diskettes
*************************

The FSF is now distributing some of the GNU software that has been ported to MS-DOS on 3.5 inch, 1.44MB diskettes.  The disks contain both source and executables.

Of course, there are deep differences between GNU and MSDOS, so some of these utilities are necessarily missing features on MSDOS.

For the 80386 and 80486 only, there are ports of GNU Emacs (see emacs) and GNU C/C++ (see cc).  The following software will run on 8086 and 80286--based machines; it does not require an 80386. Bison (see yacc), RCS (see rcs), flex (see lex), GAWK (see awk), cpio (see cpio), diff (see diff), MicroEmacs (see emacs), find (see find), some file utilities (see utilities), gdbm (see dbm_3), grep (see grep), libc (see libc_3), ptx (see ptx), indent (see indent), less (see less), m4 (see m4), make (see make), sed (see sed), shar (see shar), sort (see sort), and Texinfo (see texinfo).

Archiving Formats
*****************

Traditionally, GNUish MSDOS archives are made using Rahul Dhesi's zoo archiver.  This archive format is popular and portable, used in many places, notably for the Usenet comp.binaries.ibm.pc exchange group.  The GNUish MSDOS project selected it because it works both on MSDOS and UNIX, and all the sources are freely available. Moreover, it offers a nice user interface and is dependable.

Some people wanted GNUish MSDOS to use zip for its better compression, but zip was proprietary software at that time.  A new version of zoo (version 2.1) offers a higher compression rate, comparable to what zip can achieve.  About at the same time, the Info-ZIP group produced a zip program available in source form, and which work both on MSDOS and UNIX.  There are no more big reasons for using one instead of another.

Also, some sites converted all of GNUish MSDOS to ARC or LHarc format.  Instead of feeding an archivers war, let us simply hope that each archive site will follow the GNU spirit and at least offer the free archiver they use, both in executable and complete source form.

Most packages consists of two archives, one for the complete source and documentation, the other for the executable and data files; however, it happens that the documentation is sometimes provided with the executables.  The filename for a package archive is often selected according to the following pattern:

     PROGRAM VERSION EDITION SEQUENCE.EXTENSION

In this syntax, PROGRAM is a short string to identify the product, e.g. futi indicates GNU file utilities; while VERSION is a decimal integer naming the version, without any decimal point, v.g. 14 for 1.4, 358 for 3.58; EDITION is a for the first release in GNUish MSDOS, then b, c, etc.  for subsequent editions.  The value of SEQUENCE is the letter s for the source and documentation, or x for executable and data files.  When EXTENSION is zoo, this usually refers to Zoo version 2.1.

FTP Archive Sites
*****************

The official GNU home is prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38] (problems with prep should be reported to gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu). There is currently no room on prep.ai.mit.edu to put GNUish MSDOS files up for ftp.  If prep get more disk space, they might become available.  The collection of programs known as the GNUish MSDOS project is still available for ftp at the following addresses.  Different archiving sites might use different archivers.  The actual extension of any given archive should give you a clue about which archiver to use. [Upload directories are listed for the moderator's convenience only].

The expression from the usual places, later in this document, refers to the three first sites of this list.

  * ftp.iro.umontreal.ca [132.204.32.22], in pub/Internet/gnuish.

     Archives are uploaded there first.

  * vulcan.phyast.pitt.edu [130.49.33.16], in pub/gnuish.

     Archives are uploaded in [incoming] from the iros1 copy, then Roberto move them to their proper place.

  * wuarchive.wustl.edu [128.252.135.4], in systems/msdos/gnuish.

     Archives are uploaded in place directly from the iros1 copy.

  * wsmr-simtel20.army.mil [192.88.110.20], in pd1:<msdos.gnuish>.

     David repacks from .zoo to .arc before uploading, because SIMTEL20 (which uses TOPS20) does not support .zoo files.

  * funic.funet.fi [128.214.6.100], in pub/msdos/utilities/gnuish.

     Petri automatically gets new products from SIMTEL20, and repacks files from .arc to .lzh.  [pub/msdos/incoming]

The organization and maintainance of the archive sites is the work of Francois Pinard, Roberto Gomez, Petri Hartoma, David Camp, Keith Petersen, Chris Myers, Dave Curry and Russ Nelson.

GNUish Msdos Contents
*********************

The following contents for GNUish MSDOS is loosely organized along the lines of related UNIX man pages.

awk
===

GNU awk current GNU version is 2.14.  There is a faster awk, also distributed under the GNU General Public License, written by Mike Brennan.  For the original distribution, fetch executables in mawk1.zip and sources in mawk1.1.tar.Z from oxy.edu, in public.  Or fetch executables and documentation in mawk11ax.zoo and sources in mawk11as.zoo from the usual places.

cc
==

GNU C current GNU version is 2.3.3.  There is no port of GNU C available for 8088 and 80286 systems, and it is very unlikely that there would ever be one.  So, GNUish MSDOS is still relying on proprietary compilers for its existence.  Currently, ports have been done using Microsoft C compilers or Borland Turbo C/C++; it seems so far that Microsoft C generates faster code, works better with huge pointers, and offers a working alloca(); but promoting proprietary software is against the GNU goals, any step in the direction of compiler independence would be beneficial for the community.

GNU C had indeed been ported to 80386 MSDOS, under the name djgpp, by DJ Delorie.  This opens wide doors for porting further GNU software for 80386 systems under MSDOS, for those many GNU programs requiring a fair amount of addressing space.  However, beware that djgpp based ports always require a 80386 machine.

DJ Delorie made 32-bit 80386 MSDOS extender with symbolic debugger, and using it, a complete port of GNU C/C++ compiler with utilities, development libraries, and source code.  It generates full 32-bit programs and supports full virtual memory with paging to disk.  It requires at least 5MB of hard disk space to install, and 512K of RAM to use.  It is compatible with XMS memory managers and VCPI, but not with Microsoft Windows extended mode or other DPMI managers.  It cannot emulate multitasking (e.g. fork(2)) or signals.

All this can be anonymously ftp'ed from barnacle.erc.clarkson.edu [128.153.28.12] in pub/msdos/djgpp. First fetch and carefully read the three files readme.1st, readme and faq from that directory; or else the cumulative file MSDOS.gcc from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38], in pub/gnu/MicrosPorts. File README.gcc should also be available from the usual places.

compress
========

compress current GNU version is 4.0.1.  GNUish MSDOS has not selected any current port yet, but many are available.

cpio
====

GNU cpio current GNU version is 2.2.  Version 1.1 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in cpio11ax.zoo and sources and documentation (inside readme) in cpio11as.zoo from the usual places.  You also need Thorsten Ohl's gnulib to compile it.

Working on GNU cpio port:

     92-02-24 Matthew J. D'Errico <doc@magna.com>

ctags
=====

GNU [ce]tags current GNU version comes from GNU Emacs distribution, currently 18.59.  Russ Nelson made a version for Freemacs. For the original distribution, fetch etags.zip from grape.ecs.clarkson.edu [128.153.28.129], in pub/msdos/freemacs. Or fetch the executables, sources and documentation as etags.zoo from the usual places.

diff
====

GNU diff current GNU version is 2.0.  Version 1.15 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl, using Microsoft C v5.1 or v6.0.  Fetch executables in dif115ax.zoo and sources in dif115as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no documentation.

There is a 386/468 port of GNU diff 1.15 in the djgpp package.

emacs
=====

GNU Emacs current GNU version is 18.59.  There is no port of GNU emacs available for 8088 and 80286 systems, and it is very unlikely that there would ever be one.  Any Emacs for small MSDOS systems only implements a tiny subset of the true thing.

Russ Nelson's Freemacs is closest in spirit to the real thing, by providing a full extension language.  Version 1.6a can be gotten from various places (clarkson, wustl, simtel, ...). It is made of a MINT interpreter written in 8088 assembler, and of several MINT code application files to drive emacs modes.  MINT has no relation to GNU Emacs LISP and limits itself to 64k per file.  For the original distribution, fetch all from grape.ecs.clarkson.edu [128.153.28.129], in pub/msdos/freemacs. Or fetch the executables code as emacs16a.zoo (plus emacs100.zoo for a Zenith Z-100) and the sources as emac16as.zoo, from the usual places; also fetch some EGA utilities as emacsega.zoo and a spelling checker as emacspel.zoo. You might want to fetch emacspat.zoo too for a few patches, applied by Freemacs itself.

Jonathan Payne's Jove, on the other side, is not extendable, but can handle surprisingly big files on MSDOS.  It is well featured and reasonably fast.  It can be made almost comfortable to GNU Emacs users, given a proper jove.rc.

GNU Emacs has indeed been ported to 80386 MSDOS by Manabu Higashida and Hirano Satoshi, under the name Demacs, using DJ Delorie port of GNU C. The current version is 1.2.0, 91-12-12, and corresponds to Emacs 18.55 with some changes from Emacs 18.57.  One version handles 8-bit characters sets, the other, based on Nemacs, handles 16-bit character sets, including Kanji.  It is compatible with XMS memory managers and VCPI, but not with Microsoft Windows extended mode or other DPMI managers.  Fetch binaries and diffs from utsun.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp, in GNU/demacs.  First fetch and carefully read the file README from that directory; or else the file MSDOS.emacs from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38], in pub/gnu/MicrosPorts. File README.emacs should also be available from the usual places.

Craig Finseth maintains a list of Emacs Implementations and Literature; fetch emacs from mail.unet.umn.edu [128.101.101.103], in import/fin.

Eberhard Mattes writes that GNU Emacs for OS/2 2.0 is available on ftp-os2.nmsu.edu and on ftp.uni-stuttgart.de in soft/os2 as emacs-18.58.3.

find
====

GNU find current GNU version is 3.7, comprising: find, locate and xargs.  Version 1.2 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in find12ax.zoo and sources and some documentation (inside readme) in find12as.zoo from the usual places.  You also need Thorsten Ohl's gnulib to compile it.  Fetch find12.zoo from the usual places.

ghostscript
===========

Get executables in ghostscript-2.5.2msdos.exe and sources in ghostscript-2.5.2.tar.Z from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38], in pub/gnu. You might need ghostscript-fonts-2.5.2.tar.Z from the same place.

grep
====

GNU fgrep current GNU version is 1.1.  Version 1.1 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in fgre11ax.zoo and sources in fgre11as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no documentation.

GNU grep current GNU version is 1.6 (+patch), comprising: grep and egrep.  Version 1.5 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in grep15ax.zoo and sources in grep15as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no documentation.

gzip
====

GNU gzip current GNU version is 0.7.  Version 0.7 has been ported to MSDOS by Jean-loup Gailly, the gzip author.  Fetch executables and documentation in gzip07ax.zoo and sources in gzip07as.zoo from the usual places.

indent
======

GNU indent current GNU version is 1.6.  Version 1.1 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in inde11ax.zoo and sources and Texinfo unformatted documentation in inde11as.zoo from the usual places.

less
====

less current GNU version is 177.  Version 177 has been ported to MSDOS by Mark Lord, using Borland C.  For the original distribution, fetch executables and sources in less177e.zip from wuarchive.wustl.edu in mirrors/msdos/txtutl. Or fetch executables in les177ax.zoo and sources in les177as.zoo from the usual places.

lex
===

Fast lex current GNU version is 2.3.7.  Version 2.3.6 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in fle236ax.zoo and sources and roff unformatted documentation in fle236as.zoo from the usual places.  You also need Thorsten Ohl's gnulib to compile it.

m4
==

GNU m4 current GNU version is 1.0.3.  Version 0.5 (also called 0.50) has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in m4v05ax.zoo and sources and Texinfo unformatted or DVI ready documentation in m4v05as.zoo from the usual places.  You also need Thorsten Ohl's gnulib to compile it.

make
====

GNU make current GNU version is 3.62.  Version 3.58 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl, using Microsoft C v6.0.  Fetch executables in mak358ax.zoo and sources and Texinfo + roff unformatted documentation in mak358as.zoo from the usual places. You also need Thorsten Ohl's swapping library, fetch swalibas.zoo from the usual places.  If you intend to recompile make, beware that one patch has been lost for the makefile in make358as.zoo, so the makefile might not work as is.

Working on GNU make port:

     92-09-03 Pax Ken Holmberg <kenh@tfs.com>

patch
=====

Larry Wall's patch current GNU version is 2.0.12g8.  GNUish MSDOS has not selected any current port yet, but many are available.

perl
====

Larry Wall's Perl current GNU version is 4.035.  Version 4.019 has been ported to by Stuart Phillips, using Borland C++ 3.0 and VROOM, it works faster with extended memory.  For the original distribution, fetch executables in bcv14_perl4-019E.zip and sources in bcv14_perl4-019.zip plus xspawn34.zip from tandem.com [130.252.12.8], in pub/perl. Or fetch executables in pl4019ax.zoo and sources in pl4019as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no documentation.

Also, version 4.000 has been ported to MSDOS by Len Reed.  Fetch executables in perl_exe.zoo from eeserv.ee.umanitoba.ca [130.179.8.1] in pub/msdos/perl.

ptx
===

GNU ptx current GNU version is 0.2.  Version 0.1 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in ptx01ax.zoo and sources and documentation in ptx01as.zoo from the usual places.

rcs
===

GNU Revision Control System current GNU version is 5.6.  Version 5.5 has been ported to MSDOS by Stuart Phillips.  For the original distribution, fetch sources and executables in rcs55.zip from wuarchive.wust.edu, in mirrors/msdos/pgmutil. Or fetch executables in rcs55ax.zoo and sources and roff unformatted documentation in rcs55as.zoo from the usual places.

sed
===

GNU sed current GNU version is 1.13.  Version 1.06 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in sed106ax.zoo and sources in sed106as.zoo from the usual places.  You also need Thorsten Ohl's gnulib to compile it. There is no documentation.

sh
==

GNU bash current GNU version is 1.12.  There is no port of GNU bash available to 8088 and 80286 systems yet, but the techniques used in perl (see perl) and make (see make) make it in principle possible to run programs of this size under MSDOS.

Ian Stewartson ported the Charles Forsyth sh from MINIX to MSDOS, using Microsoft C v5.1.  For the original distribution, fetch executables in ms_sh164.zip from wuarchive.wustl.edu, in mirrors/msdos/sysutl; fetch sources from comp.sources.misc in Volume 10 issues 053-059, Volume 12 issues 019-026, Volume 13 issues 079-080, Volume 14 Issues 065-066, Volume 16 Issues 078-079.  Or fetch executables and documentation in sh164ax.zoo and sources in sh164as.zoo from the usual places.

shar
====

shar current version is 3.49.  It has been distributed through alt.sources on 90-09-24.  Version 3.49 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in sha349ax.zoo and sources and roff unformatted documentation in sha349as.zoo from the usual places.

sort
====

GNU sort current GNU version is found within GNU Text Utilities version 1.3.  A prerelease of version 0.3 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables and documentation in sort03ax.zoo and sources in sort03as.zoo from the usual places.

tar
===

GNU tar current GNU version is 1.11.1.  GNUish MSDOS has not selected any current port yet, but many are available.

texinfo
=======

GNU texinfo current GNU version is 2.16, comprising: info, makeinfo, texi2dvi, texindex and extensive related code written in GNU Emacs LISP.  Prereleased versions of info and makeinfo have been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch executables in texi10ax.zoo and sources in texi10as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no documentation.

file/text utilities
===================

GNU File Utilities current GNU version is 3.4, comprising: chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, dd, df, dir, du, install, ln, ls, mkdir, mkfifo, mknod, mv, rm, rmdir, touch and vdir.  GNU Text Utilities current GNU version is 1.3, comprising: cat, cmp, comm, csplit, cut, expand, fold, head, join, nl, paste, pr, sort, split, sum, tac, tail, tr, unexpand, uniq and wc.

GNU Text Utilities historically emerged from GNU File Utilities; and version 1.4 have been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl before this split has been done.  The ported programs are: cat, chmod, cmp, cp, cut, dd, dir, head, ls, mkdir, mv, paste, rmdir, tac, tail, touch, vdir and rm.  Fetch executables and roff unformatted (or Texinfo, through a Perl script) documentation in futi14ax.zoo and sources in futi14as.zoo from the usual places.

The GNU sort program is documented elsewhere (see sort).

yacc
====

GNU bison current GNU version is 1.19.  This version compiles without changes on MSDOS.  Fetch sources in bison-1.19.tar.Z from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38], in pub/gnu.

Since bison is used to produce C source which will further be compiled, it is assumed that a bison user has a C compiler, thus s/he can compile bison itself from sources.  This why bison executables are not generally available for MSDOS.  The following patch is reported:

     *** files.c~	Thu Nov 19 15:12:52 1992
     --- files.c	Thu Nov 19 15:15:12 1992
     ***************
     *** 389,394 ****
     --- 389,395 ----
         if (actfile) unlink(actfile);
         if (tmpattrsfile) unlink(tmpattrsfile);
         if (tmptabfile) unlink(tmptabfile);
     +   if (tmpdefsfile) unlink(tmpdefsfile);
       #endif /* MSDOS */
         exit(k);
       #endif /* not VMS */

zoo
===

Rahul Dhesi's barebone Zoo extractor version 2.0 has been distributed through comp.binaries.ibm.pc (1 part: v13i001).  Fetch booz.exe and booz20.zoo from the usual places.  Use booz.exe under MSDOS to unpack the sources and documentation in booz20.zoo.

Rahul Dhesi's full Zoo current version is 2.1 (also called 2.10). Executables have been distributed in comp.binaries.ibm.pc (3 parts: v13i002-004), sources has been distributed through alt.sources on 91-07-10 (14 parts).  Fetch the executables in zoo210.exe and sources in zoo210s.zoo from the usual places.  Execute the self extracting zoo210.exe under MSDOS to unpack the zoo executables and documentation.  Unpack the sources with the obtained zoo.exe.

dbm_3
=====

GNU dbm current GNU version is 1.5.  Version 1.4 has been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl.  Fetch sources in gdbm14as.zoo from the usual places.  There is no executables archive associated with GNU dbm. There is no documentation.

libc_3
======

Many library routines frequently occurring in various GNU products have been ported to MSDOS by Thorsten Ohl, to help other ports.  Fetch sources in gnulibas.zoo from the usual places.  There is no executables archive associated with Thorsten Ohl's gnulib.  There is no documentation.

A swapping library has been developped by Thorsten Ohl, using Microsoft C v6.0, to be used by some of his other GNU ports.  Fetch sources and (TeX unformatted?) documentation in swalibas.zoo from the usual places.  There is no executables archive associated with Thorsten Ohl's swaplib.

Note that this is not a complete libc(3), but rather a small collection of GNU specific routines.

chess_6
=======

GNU chess current GNU version is 4.0.60.  This version should compile without changes on MSDOS, please someone give me a pointer to an already prepared executable.  Fetch sources in gnuchess-4.0.pl60.tar.Z from prep.ai.mit.edu [18.71.0.38], in pub/gnu.

Project Mailing Lists
*********************

There are some mailing lists to discuss MSDOS ports of GNU software. They include:

     bug-gnu-msdos@sun.soe.clarkson.edu     bug reports, enhancements
     help-gnu-msdos@sun.soe.clarkson.edu    questions and answers
     info-gnu-msdos@sun.soe.clarkson.edu    announcements, moderated
     djgpp@sun.soe.clarkson.edu             80386 djgpp discussions

To get on or off one of these lists, send a request to:

     listserv@sun.soe.clarkson.edu

or, if you don't get a reply, to:

     bug-gnu-msdos-request@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
     help-gnu-msdos-request@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
     info-gnu-msdos-request@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
     djgpp-request@sun.soe.clarkson.edu

Note: do not send requests to the lists, only the listserv!

For example, to become subscribed to the list info-gnu-msdos, send a message whose contents (not the Subject) is:

     add info-gnu-msdos

If you don't know how to use a listserv, send it a request for help.  Do this by sending it a mail message consisting of the word help, without quotes, of course.  If you don't get a reply, include an Internet return address with the command path user@host.dom.ain, replacing user@host.dom.ain with your Internet email address.

The lists are not currently digestified, and are open to subscription by anyone.  The info-gnu-msdos mailing list is moderated by Russell Nelson, solely to ensure that only announcements get sent to the list (and not requests!).  Problems with the mailing lists should be directed to the appropriate -request list.  For the newcomers: an Internet standard for mailing lists is to provide a mail alias that has the same name as the list, with -request appended, e.g. info-gnu-msdos-request.

Also, please consider these lists as GNU project subsidiary mailing lists.  They were made up after the GNUish MSDOS project, not before, and their intent is to help to keep to project moving, not to change its definition or meaning.  There are several lists already and other means to discuss non-GNUish software for MSDOS; there are other lists to discuss the pros and cons of the GNU project itself.  You can nask gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu for a description of these other lists.

The mailing lists were organized by David Camp, Len Tower, Russ Nelson and DJ Delorie.

Historical Notes
****************

Thorsten Ohl started his ports in November 1989, in Germany, while the Berlin Wall was falling.  He subscribed at some GNU mailing lists and, for correspondants wanting his MSDOS ports, organized a distribution list based on email and still located in Germany.  In 1990, around spring, the unusual quality of Thorsten ports was being recognized, and a few FTP sites organized to hold them (vulcan, simtel, wuarchive, ocf, funic); during the summer, the mailing lists were created.  Thorsten stopped actively porting GNU products to MSDOS in September 1990, to finish his PhD and continue his research in theoretical high energy physics.  He has now joined the endless list of people who support GNU by using GNU software on their UNIX workstations and contribute bug reports and (occasionally) fixes.

At this point, the mailing lists, after an initial burst of intense activity and many debates, became very quiet, and nothing really new got added to the GNUish MSDOS archives.  DJ Delorie released his 80386 port of GNU C/C++, and GNU Emacs itself was ported to 80386 under the name Demacs.

In February 1992, the archives were reorganized to better comply with the GPL, which requires the sources to be fully available at the distribution points.  Ports from Russell Nelson and Stuart Phillips were integrated in the project.

Contributors Addresses
**********************

Here are the electronic addresses of all people quoted elsewhere in this document:

     Chris Myers chris@wugate.wustl.edu
     Craig A. Finseth fin@unet.umn.edu
     DJ Delorie dj@ctron.com
     David A. Curry davy@erg.sri.com
     David J. Camp david@wubios.wustl.edu
     Eberhard Mattes mattes@azu.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de
     Francois Pinard pinard@iro.umontreal.ca
     Hirano Satoshi hirano@tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp
     Ian Stewartson istewart@datlog.co.uk
     Jonathan Payne
     Kai Uwe Rommel rommel@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
     Keith Petersen w8sdz@wsmr-simtel20.army.mil
     Len Reed holos0!lbr@gatech.edu
     Leonard Tower Jr. tower@prep.ai.mit.edu
     Manabu Higashida manabu@sigmath.osaka-u.ac.jp
     Mark Lord mlord@bnr.ca
     Mike Brennan brennan@boeing.com
     Petri Hartoma msdos1@nic.funet.fi
     Rahul Dhesi dhesi@cirrus.com
     Richard Stallman rms@gnu.ai.mit.edu
     Roberto Gomez roberto@bondi.phyast.pitt.edu
     Russell Nelson nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu
     Stuart Phillips stu@tandem.com
     Thorsten Ohl ohl@gnu.ai.mit.edu