Dockerized Development Tools

18 Feb 2017

Stefan “Bebbo” Franke has forked Krystian Bacławski’s AmigaOS cross compiler toolchain in an effort to update, amongst other components, GCC to version 6.

I have created a Dockerfile for building a software container for use with Docker. This allows me to conveniently build and use the AmigaOS cross compiler toolchain, which requires a 32-bit environment, on my 64-bit Linux system.

Once Docker is installed we can compile hello.c, the famous “Hello world!” example:

Hello world!

$ docker run -v $HOME:/host \
  -it sebastianbergmann/m68k-amigaos-bebbo \
  m68k-amigaos-gcc /host/hello.c -o /host/hello -noixemul

Christian Vogelgsang created amitools, a collection of tools to work with AmigaOS binaries. One of these tools is xdftool which can be used to work with Amiga Disk File (ADF)s. In the example below, I use another Docker container for running xdftool.

Using xdftool, we can create a fresh a floppy image, format it using Fast File System (FFS), copy the binary we compiled in the previous step to it, and create a S:startup-sequence script that executes our binary:

$ echo C:hello > $HOME/startup-sequence

$ docker run -v $HOME:/host \
  -it sebastianbergmann/amitools \
  xdftool \
  /host/hello.adf \
  format HelloWorld ffs + \
  boot install + \
  makedir C + \
  write /host/hello C/hello + \
  makedir S + \
  write /host/startup-sequence S/startup-sequence

$ rm $HOME/startup-sequence

Now that we have a floppy image with our compiled binary we can finally test it using the FS-UAE emulator (provided by yet another Docker container):

$ docker run -it \
  -e DISPLAY=$DISPLAY \
  -v /tmp/.X11-unix:/tmp/.X11-unix \
  -v $HOME/.config/fs-uae/:/home/fsuae/config \
  -v $HOME:/host \
  jamesnetherton/fs-uae \
  --amiga_model=A1200 \
  --floppy_drive_0=/host/hello.adf

Hello world!

The above assumes that you have Kickstart ROM files in the $HOME/.config/fs-uae directory on the host.

If you do not have Kickstart ROM files available then you can omit the -v $HOME/.config/fs-uae/:/home/fsuae/config \ line in the command shown above and FS-UAE will fall back to the Open Source AROS kernel:

Hello world!

By the way: the binary created by compiling hello.c is simple enough to be executed through vamos, the Virtual AmigaOS that allows to run AmigaOS m68k binaries directly on Linux:

Hello world!

Viva Amiga

06 Jan 2017

Back in 2011, there was a Kickstarter campaign to produce a “a film about the legendary Amiga system”. Today I was able to purchase this film on Vimeo.

Unfortunately I have to say that I am happy that I did not support this film’s campaign back then (because I heard about it too late). It’s not only that this film was delayed again and again. From what I was able to observe as an outsider (as someone who did not back the film) it appears that the communication by the project creator was lacking. As far as I can see, no physical copies of the film are available at this point in time. Backers of the Kickstarter campagin were promised a DVD of the film. And while DVD might have been fine back in 2011 it’s not acceptable to not offer a BluRay in 2017.

The film itself turned out rather short: 62.5 minutes including opening titles and closing titles. The content is not bad but if you have seen “From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years”, for instance, then there is not much in this film that you have not seen before. I have to say, though, that I enjoyed the focus on artistic usage of the Amiga.

From Bedrooms to Billions:
The Amiga Years

16 Dec 2016

From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years

Today I received the physical rewards from the “From Bedrooms to Billions: The Amiga Years” Kickstarter that I mentioned in my previous post.

I watched the Special Edition, which I had not seen before, and have to say that I like it even more than the Standard Edition. Especially the extended section of the demoscene was a welcome addition.