SciTech Software Announces Release of Open Watcom 1.2

Chico, California -- (January 13, 2003) -- SciTech Software, Inc. today announced that Open Watcom 1.2 has been released and is now available for download from the www.openwatcom.org website. This release contains a large number of new features, product enhancements and several fixes designed to bring Open Watcom to a higher level of quality and compatibility. SciTech software Inc, the official maintainers of the Open Watcom project, have also announced the availability of an updated Open Watcom CD, complete with SciTech’s installers for Windows and OS/2. Support for the update will be handled exclusively through the Open Watcom website.

“We continue to be impressed by the level of community involvement in this project and look forward to providing the Open Watcom project with a host of additional enhancements during 2004” said Andrew Bloo, Director of Sales and Marketing for SciTech Software inc.

This latest release marks the second official update to Open Watcom since the projects inception, and sets the stage for future development. SciTech has stated in the past that the goal of the project is to offer regular stable product releases on a more frequent basis and looks to the growing community of developers to assist in making this goal a reality. To further drive the project, SciTech is currently funding a feasibility study on porting Open Watcom for use on Linux, with the goal of being able to provide an alternate compiler option as well as a commercial quality debugger for Linux and BSD developers.

"Open Watcom 1.2 is the culmination of a great deal of hard work from numerous project contributors, the number and quality of enhancements to this release stands as testament to their dedication to the success of this project" said Michal Necasek, Project Leader for Open Watcom.

What's new in Open Watcom 1.2

• The C compiler now performs stricter checking on function prototypes and pointer operations. This may lead to previously undiagnosed warnings/errors appearing when compiling incorrect or ambiguous code.
  
• The C compiler diagnostic messages have been improved to print more information, making it easier to isolate the problem.
  
• A new warning (W130) has been added to the C compiler to diagnose possible precision loss on assignment operations. This warning is never on by default and must be enabled through '#pragma enable_message(130)' or '-wce=130' switch.
  
• Support for C99 style variable argument macros (and __VA_ARGS__) has been added to the C and C++ compilers.
  
• Added support for the __func__ symbol (name of the current function) which is equivalent to the already existing __FUNCTION__ symbol.
  
• Better C99 style support for "long long" type is now available in the C and C++ compilers. LL, ULL and LLU suffixes are recognized for constants. "long long int" is now also recognized.
  
• Added C99 style *LLONG_MIN/MAX defines to limits.h.
  
• The C++ compiler has been fixed to properly accept source files where a template was the last item in a namespace or an external linkage.
  
• Several new -adxx options have been added to the C and C++ compilers to support automatic generation of 'make' style dependency files.
  
• The C compiler has been fixed to correctly diagnose illegal union assignments.
  
• The C compiler now issues warnings on operations involving pointers to different but compatible unions.
  
• The C and C++ compilers now ensure word alignment of wide character string literals to satisfy Win32 API restrictions.
  
• The __UNIX__ macro is now supported in C and C++ compilers, wmake and wasm. It is currently defined for QNX and Linux targets.
  
• Default windowing support has been re-enabled for Win16 and Win386 runtime libraries.
  
• Since default windowing is no longer supported on most platforms, the Programmer's Guide and IDE tutorial have been updated to reflect that fact.
  
• The Win32 GUI tools now support the Windows XP look and feel.
  
• AutoCAD and MFC targets have been removed from the IDE, the –bw switch (default windowing) is no longer available in the IDE for OS/2 and Win32 targets.
  
• Manual for the CauseWay DOS extender has been added.
• The dmpobj tool has been added. This utility dumps the contents of OMF object files and can be useful to developers.
  
• Several system definitions have been added to wlink: os2_pm (16-bit OS/2 Presentation Manager executable), os2_dll (16-bit OS/2 DLL) and os2v2_dll (32-bit OS/2 DLL).
  
• The linker has been fixed to read "AR" style archives produced by third party tools.
  
• The linker has been fixed to prevent crashes when linking with COFF files providing uninitialised COMDAT entries
  
• Several linker crashes related to ELF object files and executables have been resolved.
  
• Updated wlink to call wlib with the -c (case sensitive) option when creating import libraries. This fixes problems with DLLs that export symbols differring only in case.
  
• The C runtime library has been optimized to produce smaller executables.
  
• The printf() function now supports the "ll" format specifier for "long long" integers.
  
• The printf() function has been enhanced to support %b format specifier for bitfields.
  
• Execution order of C library termination routines is now better defined to prevent instances where temporary files created through mktemp() could be left behind.
  
• [OS/2 32-bit] To prevent crashes, termination code is not run if second instance of a DLL failed to load due to single DGROUP.
  
• [OS/2 32-bit] The __grow_handles() function was incorrectly adding requested handles to existing limit instead of setting the limit to n.
  
• [OS/2 32-bit] Fixed a problem with _STACKLOW in multithreaded programs and DLLs. This prevents crashes where Fortran DLLs would run out of stack.
  
• [OS/2 16-bit] Fixed default math exception handler which wasn't popping the FP status word off the stack and would therefore crash on exit.
  
• The Win32 Image Editor has been enhanced with drag-and-drop support.
  
• The IDE has been fixed to properly handle mixed case filenames.
  
• The Microsoft compatibility tools (NMAKE, CL) have been fixed to better handle command line arguments.
  
• The Dialog Editor (wde) has been fixed to prevent occasional DDE related crashes when run from inside the Resource Editor (wre).
  
• The 'Change font' option no longer crashes the GUI debugger (wdw).
  
• On OS/2, wdw now intercepts the F10 key instead of passing it on to the system.
  
• The code generator now deletes object files if it was interrupted.
  
• Previously zero-length invalid object files could be left behind, interfering with make operation.
  
• The wasm assembler has been enhanced to generate file dependency information usable by wmake.
  
• Numerous minor fixes have been made to wasm.
  
• Compatibility with MASM 6 has been improved with wasm.
  
• Support for sysenter and sysexit instructions has been added to wasm and wdis.
  
• Disassembly of xchg and bound instructions has been fixed in wdi (corrected order of operands).
  
• Several previously undocumented wmake directives have been documented.
  
• A -sn ('noisy') option has been added to wmake to print all commands that wmake executes, including silent ones.
  
• The w32api project has been updated to the latest version.
  
• The os2api project has been enhanced - added multimedia headers and libraries and numerous fixes have been made to the header files.
  
• The debugger now supports the F7 key as a shortcut for "run to cursor". This is consistent with CodeView.
  
• New internal variable dbg$ntid (next thread id) has been added to the debugger. This permits automated iteration of all threads.
  
• The wsample tool has been updated to dynamically allocate storage for command line, where previously the command line length was limited to 128 characters.
  
• The FORTRAN compiler has been changed to preserve case of symbols with linkage other than FORTRAN. This is especially helpful when calling OS API functions and using case sensitive link step (now default).

About SciTech
SciTech Software, Inc. is a leading supplier of PC graphics utilities, drivers, and tools for the embedded, industrial and enterprise markets. SciTech's products include, SciTech SNAP Graphics, a fully accelerated binary compatible graphic device driver solution, SciTech GLDirect, an OpenGL to Direct3D driver and SciTech MGL, a professional graphics library used to develop some of today's most popular software programs. SciTech products support the Windows, Linux, OS/2, DOS, QNX, and SMX operating systems. SciTech is privately held and the company's web address is http://www.scitechsoft.com

About Open Watcom
The Watcom C/C++ and Fortran products will be the first mass market, proprietary compilers to be Open Sourced and, weighing in at nearly three million lines of source code, will represent one of the largest pools of commercial source code of any type ever released under an Open Source license. Sybase, Inc. developed the original Watcom code and SciTech Software, Inc. is the official maintainer of the project. The Open Watcom project has stirred tremendous interest among developers worldwide. Thousands have already joined the Open Watcom community at www.openwatcom.org in order to use Open Watcom and contribute to its further development. Watcom supports software development in Windows, DOS, OS/2, Netware, QNX, and other operating systems (a Linux version of Open Watcom is planned). The Open Watcom web address is http://www.openwatcom.org.

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