Wanting to start coding for AmigaOS4.x from scratch

@Slayer

I used gdb many years ago when I ported Kaffe to the Amiga. It was OK under ixemul then (on M68K, of course). As is typical with *nix software, it was designed to be used from the command line by a developer with the capacity to remember lots of meaningless acronyms and abbreviations.

As an on-line debugger, it can't be used to debug system components (since it can't interrupt and pause system tasks). In that sense it's of no use to me now with my OS component development, I have to rely on printf statements (to the serial debug port).

Rigo's Codebench (there's another plug for it) has an interface to gdb, but I must admit I haven't used it.

@tonyw

Erm, no it doesn't. I gave up on that as GDB is just horrendous. I did start writing my own debugger, but progress has been next to none due to lack of motivation.

Simon

@orgin
Quote:
I think a lot of that has to do with how respectful the questions are asked...

@Rigo

wasnt there some interest in porting that V program? Vanguard or Valgrind or electric fence or something of that nature...

maybe a real debugger wouldn't be a bad idea at all? I mean what kind of choices do we have? I've even heard some people still use SAS/C because it has a good debugger...

I'm here to motivate you Rigo

@ssolie

The delivery is as important as how the question is constructed, only an intellectually impaired individual would overlook paying attention to this aspect

yes I guess by making that statement I am calling alot of people intellectually impaired LOL

@tonyw

thanks for your pointers

@Slayer

At the risk of repeating what has already been said:

1. Learn ANSI C
There are loads of books and online resources for plain C, the majority of applications you'll come across are still in C (especially on the Amiga). With C you can pretty much program any traditional computer platform, and a lot of the constructs and concepts are carried over into other languages. Even Perl, for all its odd syntax, still has curly brackets marking sections and functions, semicolons marking function ends etc.

2. Read the RKRMs - get the DevCD 2.1
OK, so they're out of date - quite horrendously so - but are still the best way to find out about applying the AmigaOS API, with lots of examples. If there's anything you need to know how to do, and it pre-dates AmigaOS 2.1 (!), it'll be in here. The DevCD, btw, does have documentation all the way up to OS3.5. There are some caveats though, when building for OS4, so...

3. Read the documentation in the SDK
You've already downloaded and installed the SDK, right? Of course you have - you can't apply the knowledge in step 1 without it (unless you are learning ANSI C on a rival platform, but why would you want to do that?).
Pay particular attention to Documentation/Developer Info/General/Migration Guide.pdf - this will give you the info you need to get any step 2 examples working on OS4.
Once you have the AmigaOS basics, the examples and AutoDocs in the SDK should fill in the gaps in your knowledge.

4. Ask questions
If you can't get something working, ASK. Chances are somebody else has hit the same problem and will be able to help.

There is an OS4-specific programming guide in progress (I am in the process of writing a chapter for it), but I haven't seen any status updates for a while and neither have I been asked for an initial draft, so it is probably worth getting started now with the existing resources, and pick that up later if/when it is released. It should take over from where the RKRMs left off.

Good luck!

@Chris

That is some sound advice Chris, thank you.

And I do have copies of all the Development disks and infact own the original 2.1 version... I've been collecting alot of the information for years because I knew I'd get to the point where I'd actually use it...

and yes, SDK and all the bits and pieces in place