Tools & libraries for OS/2 developers

All listed tools are available "for free" though the specific licenses differ actually.

• libExt = libposix2 (P/2-X/2, ...)
  The first approach to get a "full" BSD/Posix.1 conforming C library on OS/2. Currently an extension to EMX, might replace it later.
  Check out it's homepage
• INFO-ZIP
  This is the most common used archiver. From it's home site you can get binaries for every reasonable computer system and it should therefore be used (though other free archivers may compress better in some cases).
• EMX
  1. EMX-runtime package
     Also available from hobbes and its mirrors
  2. EMX development system
     If you install all packages available from the given locations you have complete port of GCC and are able to compile a large amount of unix software as well as native OS/2 software.
  
  Currently I demand version EMX 0.9d Fixpack 4 for new/updated packages. To check which version is installed run emxrev.cmd:

  [E:\]emxrev
  EMX : revision = 61
  EMXIO : revision = 60
  EMXLIBC : revision = 63
  EMXLIBCM : revision = 64
  EMXLIBCS : revision = 64
  EMXWRAP : revision = 60
  

• VESA package and SVGA Kit for EMX, Version 1.9.
  They greatly extend the graphics abilities of EMX.
  Check out their homesite to get the latest versions.
• TVFS (Toronto Virtual File System)
  Here's a solution for the problem with the ancient system of drive letters:
  TVFS allows you to create a virtual drive where you can create links on !
  Now you can just put/link all your software on a single virtual drive and therefore omit the name of this drive in all paths!
• Autoconf for EMX
  Meanwhile we have a native version of Autoconf, i.e. we do not further need to edit the configure scripts using some rather silly scripts but we can have most necessary changes implemented while re-building from configure.in!
• dbmalloc (?) (1st build, 20020212; 137511 Bytes)
  A malloc debugging library which can be found in the contrib stuff for EMX. I provide a new binary package.
• dmalloc 4.8.2 (2nd build, 20020426; 389431 Bytes)
  2nd build also offers a DLL in addition to the static libraries and also the documentation in PDF format.
  A malloc debugging library. Comes with a commandline utility (dmalloc1.cmd, wrapper around dmalloc.exe) which sets the according environment variables which are used to control debugging while runtime.
• pdflib 3.0 (1st build, 347741 Bytes)
  A Portable C library for dynamically generating PDF files.
  pdflib 3.02 static lib (1st build, 145286 Bytes)
• t1lib 1.3.1 (1st build, 20011122; 158145 Bytes)
  A portable C library for generating character- and string-glyphs from Adobe Type 1 fonts.
• FFTW library 2.1.2:
  fftw is a a collection of fast C routines to compute the Discrete Fourier Transform in one or more dimensions.
  I supply a complete package (1st build, 189966 Bytes) offering DLLS and import libs.
• The Utah Raster Toolkit (URT) is a collection of programs and C routines for dealing with raster images commonly encountered in computer graphics.
  I offer most binaries (tools, conversion utilities) and a DLL as well.
  3.1b (5th build, 20020105; 595647 Bytes)
• mkdef.cmd (Download from online CVS repository for LessTif)
  A REXX tool to maintain linker definition files (.def) for DLLs. It ensures that libraries remain binary compatible even if they are using exports with ordinals.
• XFree86 for OS/2 (AKA XFree/2)
  This is the best (and free) X-server for OS/2
  It allows to create native X11-apps on OS/2 and therefore to port many un*x/X11 based apps to OS/2.
• X/2 related stuff
  • fltk
    fltk (Fast Light Tool Kit) is a GUI library.
  • LiteClue (25417 Bytes, 20020101)
    Static libraries for LiteClue X11 widget.
  • LessTif, a Motif clone.
    XFree86OS/2 is supported out of the box. Get the OS/2 binaries here!
  • Mesa
    A free OpenGL implementation.
    The XFree/2 port of 3.x is now available.
    This port is likely to become superfluous since the supplied functionality will hopefully show up in XFree86 4.x.
  • QT:
    You can get QT 1.31 in a binary version and versions 1.40 - 2.0 (somewhere at that site ...).
    All archives may include all the files necessary to develop new applications based on QT but on runtime qt.dll is sufficient.
  • TabBook (22501 Bytes, 20020101)
    Static libraries for TabBook X11 widget.
  • Xaw3d is an alternative to the plain old Athena widget set. The source is freely available and I'm currently using the port from J. Sawataishi.
  • Xbae was part of the LessTif distribution, will be released in a distinct package soon, since it's now a standard-alone project.
    4.9.1 (1st build, 225841 Bytes; 20011119). Linked against the 2.1 version of LessTif 0.93.18.
    Also available are the OS/2 Makefiles (20020407; 6750 Bytes)
  • Xlt was part of the LessTif distribution, will be released in a distinct package soon, since it's now a standard-alone project.
    9.2.9 (1st build, 195683 Bytes; 20011113). Linked against the 2.1 version of LessTif 0.93.18.
    Also available are the OS/2 Makefiles (20020226; 5071 Bytes)
  • XPM
    A library for handling XPixMaps
  • xforms
    A widget library. Since the package is not free (i.e. no sources available) and buggy (not only the OS/2 version) I have withdrawn any ports based on it and do not attempt others!
    Attention: different versions are not necessarily (binary) compatible. Be sure to use the correct version! The packages are available from Holger Veit's XFree/2 ported software page.