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General discussionAnyone have a roundown of the various DOSBox forks?(41 posts)(41 posts)
(41 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 23, 2023
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vv221: I would be curious to learn what is the "good reason" behind centralization of a lot of open-source code on GitHub.
I don’t understand. The whole idea of Git is that it is a distributed and decentralized versioning system. If GitHub shuts down this moment, half an hour later the developers can have their code (with the whole history of changes) hosted on GitLab or BitBucket. In Git there is no single central server - contrary to CVS or SVN, used on SourceForge.

GitHub is popular, because it is probably the easiest to work with - but it doesn’t mean there are no other solutions. For example, many corporation hosts their own GitLab service internally.
Post edited January 23, 2023 by C64Roman
Posted January 23, 2023
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C64Roman: The whole idea of Git is that it is a distributed and decentralized versioning system.
Right, this is why GitHub strong centralization should not have happened. But by putting an emphasis on its "social network" features, the GitHub team managed to catch an awful lot of naive developers in its nets.

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C64Roman: If GitHub shuts down this moment, half an hour later the developers can have their code (with the whole history of changes) hosted on GitLab or BitBucket.
The code is only a small part of a software project. If GitHub shuts down or changes its rules a lot would be lost, especially bug reports and discussions between developers.

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C64Roman: GitHub is popular, because it is probably the easiest to work with
That’s funny, because most developers I know think that GitHub is a pain to work with ;)
Posted January 23, 2023
Discussions happen not only at GitHub; currently Discord is a very popular tool for this purpose, previously it was Slack. They get lost nevertheless - also, many happen behind closed doors, on channels hidden from users not involved in the given project.

Lost bug reports would be a pain - but there is probably no good solution for this yet. And SourceForge is no better at all. What’s important - in case of unexpected GitHub shutdown, both current code state and history of active projects are recoverable without much effort. With SourceForge, not really. Nobody claims Git or GitHub is perfect - but most agree it is superior.

There are reasons developers tend to prefer Git-based solutions over SVN or CVS, and there are reasons most prefer GitHub over GitLab.
Posted January 24, 2023
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C64Roman: Discussions happen not only at GitHub; currently Discord is a very popular tool for this purpose, previously it was Slack.
This is even worse. There have already been multiple open-source projects I decided not to contribute to (and in some cases not even use them) because of their choice to rely on Discord.

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C64Roman: Lost bug reports would be a pain - but there is probably no good solution for this yet.
Of course there is a good solution ;)
Here I use a self-hosted git-based forge, with multiple automated backups. No company can "steal" the bug reports I work with.

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C64Roman: And SourceForge is no better at all.
I agree with that. But I am still not convinced that GitHub is better in any way.

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C64Roman: What’s important - in case of unexpected GitHub shutdown, both current code state and history of active projects are recoverable without much effort. With SourceForge, not really.
How are they different? In both cases you keep the code and history if you had a local copy, and lose it if you did not have one.
Posted January 24, 2023
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dtgreene: Something that has come up is that there's apparently some forks of DOSBox that may offer features that are not in the main version. (I've heard of save states in some fork, for example.) Does anyone have a rundown of the various DOSBox forks out there?

Also, if you want, you could mention other emulators that are capable of playing DOS games. (I believe I once used bochs to play an old game, for example.)
Well, you could check dosemu2, it is active re-incarnation of plain old dosemu.
Posted January 24, 2023
@vv221 I find Discord much more convenient than IRC. AFAIK with SVN you don’t have the whole history locally, just the snapshot of the current code (at least by default). And hosting everything by yourself could be done - if you have plenty of time (keeping the server software up to date, configuring the pipeline to compile on various operating systems and do all the static code analysis, doing regular backups) and money to run this.
Posted January 25, 2023
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C64Roman: And hosting everything by yourself could be done - if you have plenty of time (keeping the server software up to date, configuring the pipeline to compile on various operating systems and do all the static code analysis, doing regular backups) and money to run this.
After the initial setup, the maintenance of my self-hosted git forge takes me something like half an hour every month. As for the initial setup itself, it was quite a while ago but I remember spending maybe half a day for the forge, and a couple extra hours for the automated backups. Granted, I have worked as a system administrator in several entreprises before that. I do not expect someone with no experience to do that in the same time frame ;)

The comment about having "plenty of money to run this" on the other hand I do not understand. Since I already have a server running and a domain name, the extra cost to self-host a git forge is close to zero.
Posted January 25, 2023
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vv221: Granted, I have worked as a system administrator in several entreprises before that. I do not expect someone with no experience to do that in the same time frame ;)
Precisely - most developers do not have such skills and are not pursuing to gain them. Just imagine, you are in the middle of holiday trip, and you get a message that someone turned your bug reporting system into a huge „replica watches” advertisement, or something much worse. Ick!

Not to mention the cost - hardware (you need macOS, Windows, couple of Linux distros), electricity, software licenses (commercial static analysis tools can be expensive), etc.
Posted January 25, 2023
Another thing I'm wondering is what emulator would you suggest if I want a fully authentic experience of playing the game on original hardware. In particular, one requirement is that I would need to be able to run the game from a floppy disk image, and the load times would need to be as long as they would be on a real floppy drive.

(This is something DOSBox doesn't do, because most of the time players want to enjoy the game and would prefer the game to load instantly instead of having to wait tike you had to on period hardware.)
Posted January 25, 2023
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dtgreene: Another thing I'm wondering is what emulator would you suggest if I want a fully authentic experience of playing the game on original hardware. In particular, one requirement is that I would need to be able to run the game from a floppy disk image, and the load times would need to be as long as they would be on a real floppy drive.

(This is something DOSBox doesn't do, because most of the time players want to enjoy the game and would prefer the game to load instantly instead of having to wait tike you had to on period hardware.)
I think PCem would be the emulator you want then. Full experience, including having to install OS, setting up drivers yourself and such.
Posted January 26, 2023
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dtgreene: I want a fully authentic experience of playing the game on original hardware.
86Box, PCBox, or (as stated above) PCem.
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Community
General discussionAnyone have a roundown of the various DOSBox forks?(41 posts)(41 posts)
(41 posts)