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* FAQ: (djgppfaq).           The DJGPP FAQ list.
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This is a part of the DJGPP Frequently-Asked Questions List.

Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 Eli Zaretskii

This is the second edition of the FAQ list,
and is consistent with version 2.01 of DJGPP.

This FAQ list may be freely distributed with the DJGPP package or any part
thereof, provided this copyright notice is left intact on all copies.

  Another place to look for DJGPP documentation is the DJGPP homepage,
 at this URL:

     http://www.delorie.com/djgpp/

2. What is DJGPP?
*****************

**Q*: What is DJGPP?*

*A* :  DJGPP is a port of GNU C/C++ compiler and development tools to 32-bit,
protected-mode environment on Intel 32-bit CPUs running MS-DOS and compatible
operating systems, by DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com> and friends.  Starting from
v2.0, DJGPP programs do not need a separate extender program, only a DPMI
server to run; DJGPP includes a free 32-bit DPMI server which allows for a
32-bit, 4 GByte flat address space and up to 256 MBytes of virtual memory, a
compiler which produces 32-bit protected-mode code, and a suite of GNU
development tools ported to MS-DOS.  These provide for a development
environment which specifically favors porting Unix programs, but is also
suitable for writing new code (for example, the DOS version of the well-known
game `Quake' by id Software was compiled with DJGPP).  With a few exceptions
(notably, some of the C++ class libraries), DJGPP is *free* which makes it
deal for developing free and commercial software alike.

DJ Delorie <dj@delorie.com> is the developer and principal maintainer of
DJGPP, but anyone is welcome and encouraged to contribute.


3.1 The minimum system requirements for using DJGPP
===================================================

**Q*: What are the minimum system requirements for using DJGPP?*

**Q*: Will DJGPP run on my brand-new Acme i986DX7/300 PC with a SCSI-III
10-Terabyte disk drive under MulticOS/42 v7.99 operating system?*

*A* :  DJGPP requires at least 386SX CPU and between 15 and 35 MB of free
disk space (see more details on this below in Section 4.6), including space
for the software installation and some swap space.  A minimum of 64K of
system memory is enough for DJGPP to run with the CWSDPMI free DPMI host
(most other DPMI hosts will require much more), but at least 2.5MB of free
extended RAM is recommended for reasonably fast compilation of large source
files (4MB for compiling large C++ programs); you might see painfully slow
compiles for large sources if you don't have at least that much.  If your
machine doesn't have a numeric co-processor, you will need to install an
emulator to run floating-point code (DJGPP provides such an emulator) or link
your applications with a special emulator library (also provided with DJGPP).

DJGPP will run under native DOS; any other operating system is OK if it
includes a DPMI server.  Environments known to run DJGPP besides native DOS:
Windows 3.1 & 3.11 DOS box, OS/2 (including Warp) DOS box, Windows 95/DOS 7,
Windows NT (on Intel CPUs), Novell NWDOS 7 and Caldera's OpenDOS (but several
people have found the DPMI services of NWDOS and OpendDOS incompatible with
DJGPP, so they should probably be turned off and CWSDPMI used instead), and
Linux DOSEmu environment.

