Installing the Geek Gadgets / 2017-11-06 15:26:40

This page describes briefly what are the Geek Gadgets and how to install them to use them to compile POSIX-compliant and other pieces of C code on Amiga computers .

What Are They?

The Geek Gadgets stem from Fred Fish's effort to port the GNU development tools to the Amiga. The GNU development tools include of course GCC and binutils but also require Bourne-like shell, sh, as well as various commands like mkdir.

So, they are actually a Bourne-like shell for the Amiga, a set of usual commands, as well as development tools for C/C++, including GCC and related includes. They allow developing and running POSIX-compliant and other pieces of C code on Amiga computers, when associated with the IXEmul library.

How to Install Them?

The Geek Gadgets can be easily installed using the BOOT.lha and amiga-bin.lha files. The first file, BOOT.lha contains the minimum commands required to extract the rest of the commands in amiga-bin.lha. Just follow the instructions in the BOOT.lha.readme file:

To install a full copy of Geek Gadgets using the BOOT.lha archive, assuming
that your GG archives are in RAM:Geek Gadgets/amiga-bin and the boot archive is
dh0:junk/BOOT.lha, do the following, with the paths modified appropriately
for your local needs:

    > MakeDir DH0:GG
    > Assign GG: DH0:GG
    > CD GG:
    > LHA -mraxe x DH0:junk/BOOT.lha
    > Assign LIBS: GG:Sys/Libs ADD
    > Path GG:bin ADD
    > Assign DEVS: GG:Sys/Devs ADD
    > Assign bin: GG:bin
    > Assign tmp: GG:tmp
    > Mount IXPIPE: GG:Sys/Devs/MountList.IXPIPE
    > sh
    $ for file in /dh0/junk/amiga-bin/*.tgz
    do
    echo "=== $file ==="
    tar -xzf $file
    done
 

How to Use Them?

The Geek Gadgets are easy to use... as easy as any other UNIX commands . Importantly, they can be used in makefiles with make to do fancy stuff, like rm or mkdir directories at build-time! Well, like with POSIX commands, the possibilities are endless...

The Amiga site on SourceForge gives access to the lists of C functions provided by the Geek Gadgets through the IXEmul library and others, very useful!