retro: commit&stability

[Paul Dufresne]

>>On Wed, Aug 04, 1999 at 10:00:51PM -0400, Tom Novelli wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 04, 1999 at 08:18:49PM -0400, Paul Dufresne wrote:

> > I don't see how to do without BEGIN WHILE REPEAT control-flow
> > structure in Retro Forth.
> 
> Allright, I'll add it when I have time.  
> 
> > By the way you'll probably ugly pause(s) here and there in bforth.fo.
> > I needed it to find where it was rebooting, and I decided to let them
> > there in case it would crash again. Maybe you want me to remove them.
> 
> ack!! If it's not stable don't run it at boot time unless you really have
> to.  Or at least don't commit it.. copy retro to a different directory:
> 	(cd retro ; tar cf - *) | (cd /new_retro_dir ; tar xf - )
> 
> You could also comment that stuff out in bforth.fo before you commit.
> 
First, I don't really RUN it. It just happens that when you make a typo
it tend to reboot not much later after telling XYZ undefined. So I needed
pauses to see which word was undefined because it was displayed too
fast to read before it reboot.

After 2 or 3 hours of work I tend to commit after verifying that it
still goes up to the ok prompt. But frankly I am a very bad programmer
(especially at Forth) and it can take very long before I get my mouse
driver words really running. Somehow by committing I tend to say
myself that maybe if I am lucky someone will take a look at it and tell
me what I am doing wrong. Sure that's not your philosophy of
committing. :-)

Now, actually I have serious problems with my code. It does go up to the
ok prompt, but when I defined at the prompt:
: p begin key 97 = until ; \ that should wait you press 'a'

It reboots if you don't press 'a'. Now I had rename bforth.fo to
something else and make an empty bforth.fo. The preceding code
now work fine. So I now have to try by mistake and error which part
of bforth.fo is the problem.

Like you can see I have some problems with my code and I have this
solution to help my code not destroy yours. I suggest to add
in forth.inc after bforth:incbin "bforth.fo",
;incbin "mouse.fo"
So it would be commented out, but I and other people wishing to test
the mouse driver code, would simply uncomment it.

About making a copy of Retro, would it not be easier to simply
do a cp -a retro retrobackup?

Paul