PiDP-8/I Software

Changes To OS Compatibility
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Changes to "OS Compatibility" between 2019-05-11 20:26:18 and 2019-05-11 22:07:04

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You will have to install the `libncurses-devel` and `python2-pip` packages as well as standard Unix build tools: GCC, GNU Make, etc. Having done all that, the software will build and run.

For `bin/pidp8i` to run properly, you need to run the trunk version of our software: the systemd improvements made to it for the most recent stable release don't work under Cygwin, but we've fixed that on trunk.


## Windows Subsystem for Linux

Terminal emulation and [pty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoterminal) handling have been a longstanding problem with WSL, and there were still bugs in it the last time I tried it, on 2019.05.11 with 64-bit Windows 10 Pro 1803 running Ubuntu 18.04.02 LTS. It's much better than the tests we conducted back in 2017, however.
This worked well when we tried it last, which was on 2019.05.11 with a somewhat out-of-date installation of Windows 10 Pro.

These problems mainly show up when running the simulator under GNU screen, as our `bin/pidp8i` wrapper does. In my latest attempt, the following would result in a "dead" screen session:

    $ pidp8i start      ← start simulator under GNU screen
    $ pidp8i            ← attach to screen session
    Ctrl-A, d           ← detach; leave it running
    $ pidp8i            ← reattach; reports it "dead"
Older versions of WSL failed miserably due to problems in the terminal emulation, but it appears these bugs have been fixed.
    
You can avoid these problems by running the simulator directly:

     $ make run
     $ bin/pdp8 boot/0.script

...and so forth.

If there are still bugs we did not find in our brief testing, the changes announced at Build 2019 for [WSL 2](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/) and [the Windows console](https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal) should clear things up, as they'll provide a considerably more comprehensive Linux environment than with early WSL versions.
It is possible that the improvements announced at [Build 2019](https://news.microsoft.com/build2019/) to [WSL 2](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/commandline/announcing-wsl-2/) and [the Windows console](https://github.com/microsoft/Terminal) will solve these remaining pty and terminal emulation problems. Until they're addressed, the above choices are better options.

As with Cygwin, there are portability fixes on trunk now that are not yet released.