disus@utcs.UUCP (Jacques Giraud c/o Disus) (06/19/85)
I have been using Aztec C on an XL for about 6 months and would look to know if anyone else in Netland has had the same problems that I have had. It seems that when I do a compile or use Z heavily the machine crashes. When I do a heap check with MacsBug it turns out that the heap is corrupted. Several releases ago I mentioned this problem to Manx. They were not to helpful. I just got release E and find that there have been some mods made to improve this problem but they don't go far enough. In desperation, I started trying to find out what causes this problem. This is what I found and how to fix it. It seems that the compiler crashes when it tries to scroll. The reason for this is when a Manx utility fires up (eg. Z, ln, cc, as, shell) it does a call to MaxMem and then allocates all the memory to itself. They leave a small amount free so that any call that allocates heap space will work. It works fine on a Mac but on an XL it crashes. I went in and zapped the constant that controls the amount of memory left. In the case of Z I changed it to 0x8000 and for most of the other programs I changed it to 0x4000. If you would like the exact patches, please send me mail. If there is enough interest I will post them to the net. On the subject on Manx bashing let me make the following comments:- In release C, I got make and loved it. The documentation said there was Ctags somewhere but I didn't get it. They also added an option to Z for a startup file. That didn`t work either. In release D I got ctags. I loved that. Make didn't work anymore. In release E, a new version of the shell came out that supports menu bars. There is a command to turn menus off (set +m). It makes the XL crash every time. They also added a copyright to ctags. Adding that stopped ctags from working, so I just went back to the old version. They claim that the Z startup file works fine know,but I havent tried it. Did this happen to anyone else? In general I like the Aztec stuff but I find their control quality lacking. Jacques Giraud