[Coco] Rainbow 2.0 compiles BCC program

[Roger Taylor]

This may be good news to Rainbow DE users...

In the move towards supporting compilers and linkers (including those 
for CoCo development), I thought I would start with Borland's C++ system.

And... after pounding the keyboard for hours today, Rainbow IDE 2.0 
(in progress) has just compiled a working .exe program for Windows 
using Borland's BCC compiler.  The bcc.ini file Rainbow uses is set 
up in the Builders folder but the BCC compiler itself is where it's 
always been, in C:\dev\borland\bcc55.  Rainbow knows where the BIN 
files are, and since BCC.exe calls ILINK.exe, and my IDE has the PATH 
environment variable set to the Borland bins, it worked well.  The 
.obj and .exe are now sitting in \Projects\bcc as I hoped.  All local 
.h files are in my project folder where they should be, while stdlib 
stuff is in the Borland \includes and \lib folders.

Rainbow IDE is set up for the easiest CoCo development experience 
ever, but since it supports any assembly tools and can copy the 
objects onto virtual disk files, then mount ROMs or disks in 
M.E.S.S., the IDE is a multi-platform development suite, meaning I 
also have Vectrex developers using the IDE, Atari developers and others.

I just discovered that (with no surprise) developers are still 
cranking out Atari 2600 games, Intellivision games, and for other 
oldie systems just like, we the CoCo world, are doing for ourselves 
to keep this great thing alive for even longer.

Maybe, just maybe, eventually, Rainbow IDE users from the various 
vintage communities will be able to port some of the classic games to 
other systems.
For example, what about Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600) ported 
to the CoCo 3?  Why not?  Could there be C source code (or another 
compiler) available somewhere out there for those classic Atari 
games, and using tricks like Sock Master did with Kong, it would be 
possible with some work to do things like this.

And there's no better way to test the code right after you click the 
Go button than to see a pop-up Atari or CoCo window running the game 
(or not).  :)

If there's any feature requests from paid users, now is a good time 
to get some suggestions sent my way as I work madly to get Rainbow 
2.0 released before Xmas.

-- 
Roger Taylor

http://www.wordofthedayonline.com