Well yesterday I stumbled across the proper documentation for
the DS problem I was having with Watcom, and it appears that
there are a few things I have to be aware of:

1. I have to declare the assembler functions as "cdecl" if I
want to get parameters passed on the stack.  

2. Also, it is difficult to interpret the docs, but I think in 
the large model, DS will point to DGROUP if I make the function 
cdecl, otherwise DS will float.

3. I need to save more registers with Watcom than I do with
Borland, specifically, with Borland I need to save BP, SP, CS,
DS, SS, SI, DI, whereas with Watcom I need to save ALL registers
except ones that were used to pass parameters or used to return
data.

Anyway, in response to Bill's happenings with different alphas,
I have pulled my finger out and got RCS in operation.  You can
FREQ RCS (GNU software) from me as RCS567PC.ZIP.  It is a
revision control system for software development.  I actually
already had it compiled on my system because I needed to compile
it for work some time ago.  Here are my notes to get it to compile
using EMX...

To recompile RCS for DOS:
  go into RCS/SRC and copy ms/conf.h .
  edit conf.h to set text_work_stdio to 0
  edit ms\makefile and add a ".c.exe" rule that is a combination
  of .c.o and .o.exe
  nmake -f ms\makefile emxdos
  dmake doesn't seem to work, unfortunately.
  you now have most of the executables.
  go into DIFF
  add "diff3.exe" to the target for dos
  nmake emxdos
  copy diff.exe and diff3.exe
  go into RCSFRONT
  edit cii.c and get rid of the "const" in front of argv
  nmake emxdos
  copy cii.exe and coo.exe
  
Actually it works for both DOS and OS/2.  It is everyone's public
duty to have a copy of GNU/EMX installed on their machine so that
people can ship source.  Unfortunately this particular thing needs
to make use of "nmake" instead of "dmake", unless David
would like
to pipe up and tell us why they ship something that doesn't stand
a chance with dmake, despite the docs assuring us that it does.

But anyone who desparately wants the executables, let me know and
I'll make them available for a short time.

Anyway, once you've got the executables, to make your life simpler,
here's what you need to do.

Assume you are developing msged in a directory called
D:\MSGEDD\SRC.  You have a bunch of C files and H files there.
What you do, is simply go "md rcs", followed by "ci -l *.c *.h",
answer any stupid questions with ".", and then hey presto, you've
got a repository!  Anytime you are ready to put out a new release,
or have done a lot of work, or maybe just every night, you just
go "ci -l fred.c" or whatever files you have modified.  Again,
you can answer "." if you want.  You now have the ability to go
back and find out what changes you have made between "checkins"
at a later date.  I won't tell you how to do that, because that
will just make it seem too complicated.  If you leave it at this,
you get your foot in the door, and you can expand at your leisure!

Make your first move towards controlled software development!
Give it a go!  At least see if you can build the executables, and
then put the executables away in a safe place for when you're in 
a more amiable mood to try new things.

BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

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