Installing SRC Modula-3 on Windows/NT or Windows 95

To build SRC Modula-3 for the Windows/NT and Windows 95 platforms, fetch the boot file "boot-NT386.tar.gz". On these platforms, the file "m3cc.tar.gz" is not needed, since "NT386" includes a native code generator.

However, to build SRC Modula-3 on either of these platforms, you will need to have Microsoft Visual C++ (version 2.0 or greater) installed on your system. This is necessary because the release requires a 32-bit C compiler (msvc\bin\cl), a 32-bit linker (msvc\bin\link), a 32-bit librarian (msvc\bin\lib), and the following libraries:

We don't know if there are versions of these libraries in the public domain, or if there are any public domain substitutes for them.

We only know that Modula-3 works as distributed on the NT386 platform when used in conjunction with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2.0 compiler and tools. However, here are several potential alternatives:

Microsoft Visual C++
Microsoft provides two ways to get their goods: retail and subscription. The latest retail version of the compiler is 2.0; Egghead offers it for $349. The latest subscription version is 2.2.

Watcom C/C++ Compiler
The latest version is 10.5; the MSRP is $350; Marc found it in a mail-order catalogue for $269.

Symantec C++
The latest version is 7.0; Marc found it in a mail-order catalogue for $195.

Borland C++
This seems to be Borland's top-of-the line C compiler. Marc found it in a mail-order catalogue for $329.

Borland Turbo C++, Borland Turbo C++ Visual Edition
These seem to be slimmed-down versions of Borland C++. Unfortunately, they only generate 16-bit targets, so they can't be used with SRC Modula-3.

GNU gcc
A Windows version of the GNU tools (gcc, ranlib, ...). Free. There seem to be GNU versions of most of the tools and libraries. The only thing we have not found are the following libraries: msvcrt.lib, winspool.lib, comdlg32.lib, netapi32.lib. We expect the GNU C runtime should provide a substitute for msvcrt.lib. We don't know about the other three libraries. If you want to investigate this path yourself, the relevant URL's are:
ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/sac/win32/README ftp://ftp.cygnus.com/pub/sac/win32/
We must stress that, except for MS Visual C++ 2.0, we haven't verified that any of these compilers can be used to build Modula-3 programs. We have explored the GNU tools the most; there are some indications that they won't work out of the box.

If you get SRC Modula-3 built on either Windows/NT or Windows 95 using a compiler other than Microsoft Visual C++, please send mail to m3-request@src.dec.com to let us know!


[Modula-3 home page]

m3-request@src.dec.com
Last modified on Mon Sep 25 18:08:17 PDT 1995 by heydon                    .