Should you develop on Amiga or cross compile (With C)?

[Steam Ranger]

In 2023, is it best/most convienient to develop natively on the Amiga, or to set up a cross compiling enviroment on Linux for example?

I know C compilers are available on the Amiga, what about make/cmake/git?

I'm currently cross compiling, the only disadvantage I can see is that it obviously takes longer to test the code because you need to plug it into an emulator.

[Samurai_Crow]

Somebody was trying to port Git to Amiga but it's only available on MorphOS of the Amiga-likes. Trying to do version control on the host environment is as inconvenient as cross-compiling as a minimum.

[bifat]

Every combination is possible, and an emulator is not needed. You can also have your working directory on a network filesystem and check in on another OS. Cross-compilation is nice, but optional.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by Steam Ranger

In 2023, is it best/most convienient to develop natively on the Amiga, or to set up a cross compiling enviroment on Linux for example?

If convenience is your primary concern, then you do not need to develop software on the operating system it is intended for. It's not that hard to use, mind you, it's just that the tools are much simpler than what today is considered standard fare.

The Amiga computers were limited by available memory, processing power, storage space and storage device performance. The tools available then had to work well even under these constraints. That said, those tools were both sensible and useful to produce software for the Amiga. The later Amiga operating system versions (Kickstart 2.0 onwards) were created using these Amiga tools which ran on Amigas and did not use cross-compilation.

The Amiga command line shell was sufficiently close to what, as a minimum, Unix shell commands required. The "one integrated tool which does everything" concept never quite took hold on the Amiga. If you squint, you can see similarities between the Amiga command line shell tools and the contemporary Unix tools. There were even Amiga ports of those tools available.

I know C compilers are available on the Amiga, what about make/cmake/git?

"make" is available and shipped with Amiga compilers as early as 1987. You could also find a working older GNU make on Aminet, for example.

I don't know if there has ever been an attempt to port "CMake" to the Amiga and I doubt it would fit the environment well. This is "one integrated tool which does everything" which probably never ever ran out of memory on any platform it was used on.

The functionality of "git" exists on MorphOS, AmigaOS4 and not quite yet on the Amiga 68k operating system. One reason why it does not quite yet work for the 68k operating system is that "git", and even the "sgit" command, needs to leverage the performance of the file system in order to do its job well. The 68k Amiga operating system has no mmap() and certainly no high performance file systems to offer (with "high performance file system" meaning exactly what it does on a modern operating system, even if it runs on a vintage 2014 Raspberry Pi). What works to a degree is "subversion" if you want to give it a shot (this is still an old client which has yet to be adapted to use the most modern OpenSSL library).

I'm currently cross compiling, the only disadvantage I can see is that it obviously takes longer to test the code because you need to plug it into an emulator.

Ain't that the truth: when the results have to be tested, the Amiga is the problem

Software was developed and tested on Amigas back in the day, and it's still being done today, too. You get an almost healthy respect for how good your game has to be in order to write, test and debug software all on the Amiga. One mistake will ruin your day, or it will teach you a lesson, sometimes both, and sometimes you don't realize it until much later. It happened to me...

This may sound as dumb as it sounds to me at the moment, but hear me out. If you can attain competence and even mastery of Amiga software development on the Amiga, using the tools available, you might build muscle and gain leverage where you previously relied upon more complex tools to build and test software.

This can actually be an interesting tour of the platform and its strengths and weaknesses if you want to explore it.

[Karlos]

It depends on what you are working on and for what reason.

If you are just hobby coding for fun and have a sensible backup regimen, you can do it all on the Amiga if that's your preference. I coded on my expanded A1200 for years. For quite some time I just used StormGCC and lived with all of its various foibles, discovering many odd hacks along the way. The IDE itself was quite comfortable in RTG and with a BlizzPPC, the compilation times weren't too bad since there was a PPC version of thr compiler.

If you want to use more modern iterations if C and/or C++ moving to cross compilation becomes more important due to the lack of up to date compiler infrastructure.

If you are cross-compiling, lots of useful benefits come with it beyond more up to date compilers.

- You can host the code on the other machine and use samba to share the directory for accessing the executable.
- You can use more modern IDEs.
- You can use version control tools more easily.

Other benefits are that you can use UAE to test your code while developing and avoid exposing your real hardware to potentially buggy iterations of your project.

[Thomas Richter]

It's really hard to give good advice here because it depends on your personal preference. I personally build both on Amiga and on Linux, but I also cross-build (albeit probably not "cross compile" in the strict meaning of the word).

By the latter I mean that I prefer to run the native Amiga tool chain in vamos on a Linux system. You find the vamos I'm using for my purposes on my github page. This way, I get both good compilation, and also good integration of the linux toolchain. Thus, for example, I'm using SAS/C and DevPac for compiliation and assembling sources, the SAS/C SMake on the emulated console, but emacs from Linux, and subversion from Linux.

My A2000 is equipped with a network card, so I can also copy the binaries simply from Linux to Amiga, or also build natively on the Amiga by "checking out" from a CVS on a samba mount on linux - thanks Olaf for smbfs!

One goal of this architecture was to depend less on my (rather flaky) A2000 which works most of the time, but sometimes not, and to also backup my sources regularly on external media from the PC....

...well, just to find out that my PC died 3 weeks ago. (-:

Anyhow, the sources are on external media and the SSD of the PC, which survived the PC. Seems that the Amiga is, after all, more robust than the PC.

Luckily, I'm a backup maniac, so nothing is lost after all.

[arcanist]

My cross compile Makefile builds programs directly into a folder mounted as a drive in the emulator. The IDE tooling (code completion, live linting in VS Code) makes cross-compiling my go-to option.

Even back in the day cross compiling wasn't uncommon, particularly for system-unfriendly development. Restarting the target system when something goes wrong is a lot easier if your IDE stays up. Similarly, loading an emulator snapshot is a lot quicker. F12+Return+Return to get back to a good state on my setup.

[phx]

Originally Posted by Steam Ranger

In 2023, is it best/most convienient to develop natively on the Amiga

As others already wrote, this is much about your personal preferences. Additional factors might be the complexity of the project or the desire to relive the original experience. Also ask yourself if you prefer IDEs. Then all your development will probably be locked to one specific environment, which only exists for one specific system.

I prefer the command line, any editor, Makefiles and CVS or SVN as version control system, which makes me build my projects on nearly any platform. I am mostly developing and cross-compiling on MorphOS and NetBSD, but I can also check-out and compile on my A3000/060 anytime.

or to set up a cross compiling enviroment on Linux for example?

"Setting up" a cross compiler shouldn't be any more difficult than a normal compiler.

I know C compilers are available on the Amiga,

For native Amiga development you should probably stick with the original C compilers of the 90s, like SAS/C, preferably. Newer versions of gcc are not really useable on classic hardware. Even vbcc is not much fun to use below a 060.

what about make/cmake/git?

I wonder why people always name git, as if it is the only version control system in existence. In all my projects I never needed a feature which was not covered by cvs or svn. With the advantage that they are much less resource-hungry than git, exist even on classic systems, and you can easily set up your own server.

Don't get me started on cmake!
(Short: There is no reason you will ever need it for Amiga development.)

I'm currently cross compiling, the only disadvantage I can see is that it obviously takes longer to test the code because you need to plug it into an emulator.

Others already gave good replies. I also don't see the problem here. You will usually write to a local or network shared directory with the emulator, or let your Makefile/build-script generate an ADF.

For me the original hardware is still important for testing. Although I do most development and tests with an emulator, the real hardware should run the program every few days. Not only for verification, but also because it is the only reason to do the development. I wouldn't have any motivation to write Amiga programs for emulation only.

[Olaf Barthel]

Originally Posted by phx

I wonder why people always name git, as if it is the only version control system in existence. In all my projects I never needed a feature which was not covered by cvs or svn. With the advantage that they are much less resource-hungry than git, exist even on classic systems, and you can easily set up your own server.

There are other version control systems which work well but have been overshadowed by git, such as Mercurial and Fossil (which was designed by and is used by the sqlite developers).

git certainly is the most visible because it has been successfully commercialized. It also does what it says on the tin and will do the job more than just fine.

The downside to git, if you want to call it that, is that its complexity easily flips into becoming a burden. You wanted a cotton bag to carry things around, but what you got instead, and for free, is an Airbus Beluga and now you need to find a parking spot for it, learn how to crew and manage it, never mind how you source the kerosine

Given a choice with no other requirements attached, I would always opt for subversion or even CVS because what they do is easily remembered and you rarely need more than that.

[pink^abyss]

Originally Posted by Steam Ranger

I'm currently cross compiling, the only disadvantage I can see is that it obviously takes longer to test the code because you need to plug it into an emulator.

I use Bartmans C/C++ VsCode Solution for Windows.
I think the much faster compile times make up for a potentially slower startup.
Also crashing wont slow you down.
You also get debugging capabilities down to every cpu and chipset
cycle of your program.

Also I use LTO which would be too slow to use on real Amigas (it already takes 1-2 seconds on a 1000 times faster Pc ).

[Locutus]

Modern development tools are just so much better, i use Emacs with Clangd and lldb on C/C++ projects and i can't imagine why i would let go of the productivity improvements it provides.

I've been working a bit here and there on re-porting modern SSH to AmigaOS and it's all been cross-compiled + vamos for testing.

[mr.spiv]

Originally Posted by Steam Ranger

In 2023, is it best/most convienient to develop natively on the Amiga, or to set up a cross compiling enviroment on Linux for example?

A matter of preference.. I do +90% native just because I can and want to. You cannot beat the "efficiency" of cross-compilation or emulation in modern computers. But, for example, for my retro needs efficiency is not the main motivation.. although sometimes using a3000/040 is a bit on a "too tad slow" side Currently, what I miss most is a 68k version of a git client..

[bifat]

I'm doing my coding on unixoids and cross-translate for Amiga. But I run the things on real machines, because, as phx said: "I wouldn't have any motivation to write Amiga programs for emulation only." Or at all. There's no point.
The development tools I wrote are usually targeted to ANSI/POSIX, so that I can take them with me and supply them to Mac/Win fellows. But one of my future endeavours will be to bring them all back to Amiga, so that I can visit future parties with just the real thing - and no foldable PC anymore. That would finish a lifetime's journey with many interesting perspectives, but also a lot of fruitless aberrations. But it's still a long way back home.

[NorthWay]

Originally Posted by Steam Ranger

I'm currently cross compiling, the only disadvantage I can see is that it obviously takes longer to test the code because you need to plug it into an emulator.

Que? I'm using WinUAE and I simply have a mount that accesses a native directory that I have just called "FILE:" from which I can read and write anything that I plonk down there from the host side.
I can't think of anything simpler than just switching back to the emulator and test there.