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First release of unofficial open source SharedCLibrary Published: 19th Dec 2006, 23:11:52. Open sourcing by stealth continues Graham Shaw has released an early experimental build of his open source SharedCLibrary module. The unofficial SCL is billed as a free re-implementation of the RISC OS core module by the same name. It is hoped Graham's module will offer various enhancements and features over the existing SCLs from Castle and RISCOS Ltd - such as extra debugging to SysLog. The SCL provides a toolkit of useful functions for all applications to use when they need to work with files, manage resources, display text, and so on. For the moment, Graham's module is suitable for 32bit safe versions of RISC OS only, although he hopes to address this later. Graham also said the module needed a speed boost, but he was focused on getting the library working first before optimising it later. Graham, pictured, said: "The free SharedCLibrary should be able to act as a drop-in replacement. Don't even think about doing any performance tests at the moment, unless you want a good laugh. Some rather critical functions are written in C. "Due to the nature of this module it has the potential to cause widespread disruption to a machine if it fails. For this reason, it is being released for the purpose of evaluation and compatibility testing only in the first instance. Please read the supplied documentation before attempting to use it." RiscPkg author Graham began writing his replacement SharedCLibrary earlier this year, which was described at the time as 'open sourcing RISC OS by stealth.' • Meanwhile, RISC OS Open's new website has gone live. The team said they are hoping to get the RISC OS 5 SharedCLibrary into the first batch of source code released as part of their project. Links Download Graham's SCL or browse the source code Discussion Viewing threaded comments | View comments unthreaded, listed by date | Skip to the end Congrats Graham! Jan Rinze. JanRinze on 20/12/06 1:50PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] And there we were worried about only having 2 SharedCLibrary implementations markee174 on 20/12/06 3:55PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] to markee174: But , mind you, this is the first to be opensourced! Jan Rinze. JanRinze on 20/12/06 4:03PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] While it's regrettable that such duplication has occured (especially by ROL, who can hardly have had the resources to write a new SCL when they've got so much else to do), Graham's effort is certainly welcome. Hopefully, if the ROOL effort ever materialises, Graham's work can feed back into that, adding thenew features he's created and allowing the platform to standardise back on to a single version usable on all machines. lym on 20/12/06 4:37PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] In reply to lym: Absolutely. This proliferation of versions of OS and OS components is a nightmare for testing and support. TonyStill on 21/12/06 10:08PM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] In reply to TonyStill: I don't see why having separate implementations is such a problem provided that they work to the same API. If you find a difference of behaviour then it is either a bug in your program or a bug in the library, and in either case the sooner it is eliminated the better. I aim to match any implementation-defined behaviour of the existing SCL implementation, and programs should not rely on unspecified or undefined behaviour in the first place. I've also made it very clear that in its experimental phase, the SCL should be considered the prime suspect for any problems that occur and they should not be reported to other developers. gdshaw on 22/12/06 8:46AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] I haven't had chance to evaluate this version yet, but there is considerable scope for improvement of the SCL in an open source version, which would immediately benefit a huge number of applications. For example the UnixLib implementation of some of the stdio functions such as sprintf are far more efficient than either RISC OS SCL, and recent work on utilising the XScale's Application Accelerator engine could be used to drastically speed up large memcpy and memset operations. druck on 22/12/06 9:41AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] In reply to druck: I agree completely, but I hope you'll understand that I want to focus on correctness rather than performance in the first instance. (As I mentioned in csa.apps some of the current functions are naive in the extreme, but they have the virtue of being much less likely to go wrong than highly optimised versions.) gdshaw on 22/12/06 9:55AM [ Reply | Permalink | Report ] Please login before posting a comment. Use the form on the right to do so or create a free account.

Login Username Password Create a new account Forgot your password? Search this website This week's poll Recent developments have left me feeling... Assured ROS will appear on new hardware 55% Pleased OS desktop features are being developed 10% ROL and ROOL will eventually kiss and make up 5% App developments are critical 10% Dave Holden sleeps easy at night 19% Discuss this | Archives Featured articles Wakefield 2009 wrap-up, photos and video The weekend's RISC OS event has been and gone and we've got the rest of our lives to look forward to. Here's a round-up of extra news and Drobe's show-related coverage and some photos taken from Wakefield 2009 - plus a video from the show floor.  16 comments, latest by AW on 29/4/09 7:41PM. Published: 27 Apr 2009 RISC OS 5 pictured running on ARM Cortex-A8 kit Picture exclusive - This grainy photograph shows a port of RISC OS 5, sourced from the RISC OS Open project, running on a Beagleboard - a device powered by a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor with a built-in graphics chip. The port, developed by Jeffrey Lee with help from Uwe Kall and ROOL staff, is seen as a major breakthrough for the shared-source project as it proves the OS can be ported to new hardware without the need for a large team of engineers.  75 comments, latest by rjek on 30/4/09 3:15PM. Published: 25 Apr 2009 Open documents from Windows-using pals with handy online tool It can be a pain when someone sends you a file that can only be opened on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux - but with the help of a free-to-use website and NetSurf, Paul Stewart reveals how these documents can be viewed on RISC OS.  6 comments, latest by AW on 8/5/09 12:12AM. Published: 19 Apr 2009 Useful links News and media: Iconbar • MyRISCOS • ArcSite • RISCOScode • ANS • C.S.A.Announce • Archive • Qercus • RiscWorld • GAG-News Top developers: RISCOS Ltd • RISC OS Open • MW Software • R-Comp • Advantage Six • VirtualAcorn Dealers: CJE Micros • APDL • Castle • a4 • X-Ample • Liquid Silicon • Webmonster Usergroups: WROCC • RONE • NKACC • IRUG • SASAUG • ROUGOL • RONWUG • MUG • GAG • RISCOS.be Useful: RISCOS.org • RISCOS.info • Filebase • NetSurf Non-RISC OS: The Register • The Inquirer • Apple Insider • BBC News • Sky News • Google News • xkcd • diodesign

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