Unofficial BoingBag 3

BoingBag 3 is my attempt to help "finish" AmigaOS 3.9. While a great achievement and worthy of all Amiga users' support, OS3.9 (even after installing BB1 and BB2) feels to me like there's still 1% missing. 1% of bug fixes and of configuration for the programs included on the CD but not properly configured for an out of the box installation.

N.B. This is a totally unofficial project, not endorsed by Amiga, H&P, Hyperion or anyone else. Not only that, but it's also not even finished. This is just my little hobby horse for playing "pretend to be the AmigaOS product manager".

Goals

• Make it easy for users to upgrade to a more stable and better integrated OS3.9 installation
• Provide a stepping stone to OS4 by specifying an OS3.9/68k version of as much OS4 functionality as possible
• Offer an enhanced OS3.9 for the Coldfire accelerator project
• Identify Amiga equivalents of OS functionality included in Windows XP and Mac OS X
• Support new software development by providing a common platform of advanced APIs

Approach

I plan to do this project in several phases, later ones of which may never even happen. The plan is as follows:

• Phase 1: List all those items that I would include in an up to date standard OS3.9 installation
• Phase 2: Provide standard, better integrated, configurations for the OS3.9 contributions
• Phase 3: Provide an installer that will install all the contents, assuming the user has downloaded all the independent .lha files into one place
• Phase 4: Provide a complete integrated BoingBag package with installer (since doing this will require me to get distribution rights from each contributor I don't know how likely it will be that I can achieve this)

BoingBag 3 Specification (Phase 1)

Updates to items already integrated or included as a Contribution with OS3.9. Newst version highlighted.

Candidates for additions to OS3.9 in BoingBag 3

Also see the DataTypes list page

Known Bugs in OS 3.9

• ASyncWB delete function doesn't work
• Workbench disk rename (relabel) doesn't rename the correct disk if more than one disk has the same volume name

Gap Analysis of AmigaOS

Key

• O = Built on Open Source from someone other than the manufacturer
• 3 = Requires 3rd party software

What you can do to help

Unlike most Amiga projects, here's one you can get involved in without needing to know anything about programming. To help, you can:

• Suggest programs to include in BoingBag 3
• Test the existing suggestions
• Write ARexx or installer "glue"
• If you were a developer on OS3.9, please release patches for known bugs if possible

OS3.9 BoingBag 3 SDKs

• NDK3.9
• Amiga Developer CD 2.1 (available from http://stores.ebay.de/Amigettastreasurechest)
• Picasso96 SDK
• AHI SDK
• AmiTCP SDK
• I-Net 225 SDK
• AMPlifier SDK
• MUI 3.8 SDK

OS3.9/OS4 Wishlist

DataTypes

• DefIcons / DT Descriptor integration
• MIME types
• Streaming support for progressive types
• Document datatype supporting font formatting, text alignment and tables

Notification API

• Icons and messages that appear in all public screen titlebars

Locale

• Unicode
• Non-european languages
• Daylight Saving Time, without external application

Integrated Development Environment

• IDE
  • Language independent (nice to support C, REXX, python!)
  • Uses standard makefiles only to manage the project structure, not proprietary workspace or project files. Things not suitable for makefiles, like breakpoints in source and stuff should be stored in a separate file, but the structure itself should remain in a makefil to allow easy switching between IDE and command line development
  • REXX port
  • Should optionally use it's own public screen to keep development windows away from messy workbench ones.
  • Make it easy to set up a development environment (with all the disparate Amiga SDKs there are these days)
  • Templates for applications, libraries, datatypes etc.
  • Integrate CVS and lint
• Editor
  • colour coding
  • code completion
  • automatic indenting
  • folding of functions
  • Multiple clipboards and bookmarks
  • Undo
  • online API documentation (use xref autodoc amigaguides)
  • Integration with compiler error messages (like SCMSG)
  • N.B. TurboText can do all of this except colour coding and Undo (annoyingly!)
• Online documentation / cross referencing of source code
  • allow users to hop between function definition or declarations of both their own code and the APIs
• Other programs
• Of course, a GUI form designer is essential
• Debugger
• Compiler profiling, Mungwall, Enforcer et al.

AmigaOS 3.9 Links

• AmigaOS3.9 Home Page
• AmigaOS3.9 BoingBag 2 Home Page
• Official OS3.9 FAQ

Where can I download AmigaOS 3.9 BoingBag 1 and 2 ?

• OS3.9 BoingBag 1
• OS3.9 BoingBag 2 and BoingBag 2 Contributions

N.B. If, like me, you got a second edition OS3.9 CD (the pink one), and I hear Amiga Forever 6 doesn't have one or other BoingBag installed either, you will find that you already have BB1 installed, and that BB2 won't install. Instructions to install BB2 will appear here shortly.