The host gate accepted a WATCOM environment override and skipped when nothing
was found. Both are wrong for what it is: a system-wide Open Watcom is a
different version reporting different diagnostics, and a gate that skips is a
gate that is not running, which is the exact shape of the problem this file was
added to close. It now uses .dosboxx/watcom only and fails with the setup
command when that is absent, matching how dosboxx.py already behaves.
Nothing else in the project reaches for a system install: the DOS session sets
WATCOM=W: before calling BUILD.BAT, so the C:\DEVEL\WATCOMC fallback inside it
is unreachable.
fec/test-dos.bat was tracked but dead -- the runner generates RUN.BAT and only
copies build-dos.bat -- so it goes, along with the comment claiming it drives
the build and the three fixture READMEs that still pointed at it. The registry
decides what runs now.
(.qemu/ is untracked local debris from the same era and is left alone.)
The gate was using a system-wide Open Watcom that only ships the 32-bit
compiler. The project downloads its own toolchain, and .dosboxx/watcom/binnt
has the Windows-hosted 16-bit wcl.exe -- the same compiler and the same target
as the DOS build. Run that instead, with build-dos.bat's exact command.
The difference is not academic. Compiling 16-bit immediately reported three
functions the unification had orphaned: emit_type_helpers, which the M7
program emitter replaced, and emit_drop_helpers and emit_drop_fields, which it
was the only caller of. The 32-bit check had been clean.
Those warnings were going to the DOS screen, where the runner cannot see them:
COMMAND.COM redirects handle 1 only, and Watcom writes diagnostics to handle 2.
So the suite was green while the build was not quiet. Nothing in the runner
would ever have said so.
Found while chasing W210/W107 reported from a DOS screen, which this does not
yet explain -- those are not among what the compiler build emits now.
M1-M7: 214 passed.
There is an Open Watcom install on this host (C:\WATCOM19), and its Windows
build compiles the compiler's own sources in about a second. Every declaration
mismatch in the unification commits was found that way; each one would
otherwise have cost a DOSBox-X boot and a full compiler build to surface, with
a DOS-side message that names the wrong thing.
Add tools/tests/test_host_syntax.py: compile all twelve sources with the flags
build-dos.bat uses (-za -wx -wcd=202) and fail on any diagnostic. It skips when
Watcom is absent, so the suite still runs elsewhere. Two structural checks come
with it -- that build-dos.bat, the Makefile and the test agree on the source
list, and that no .c under fec/src is compiled by nothing. Both would have
caught check.c and emit_c.c quietly leaving the build when the M7 wrappers
included them textually.
ferro-test now runs these and the 8.3 name check before starting the VM, and
stops if they fail.
This is not verification and does not claim to be: wcc386 targets 32-bit where
the real build is 16-bit large model, so it sees syntax, types and declarations
and nothing about code generation. The DOS build and the milestone suite remain
the gate. It only moves the cheap failures earlier.
coolguy