So, another component: The shell.

The major news is that the shell has now a history, and TAB expansion, a feature long waited for. By "the shell has a history" I mean exactly that: The history function moved from CON: into the shell. In fact, what happens here is that the shell places the console into a new console mode within which the line editing of CON: remains unaltered, just if TAB or any history related keys are pressed, the console reports to the shell by means of a special CSI (control) sequence that includes the search pattern and the key. It is then up to the shell to parse the pattern, scan the path or its history, and bring it back to the screen. The latter works by the already existing ACTION_FORCE packet of the console that was documented before, but did not work quite right in 3.1 according to its specifications as it should insert data into the keyboard buffer. For 3.1, it inserted data into the output buffer, which was not quite intended.

For the records, ACTION_FORCE comes from the WShell, and the new console mode comes from ViNCEd, so ViNCEd supports the new shell right away along with the v47 CON: handler.

The TAB expansion and history functions can be turned off by a shell variable, "set simpleshell on" resets the shell back to 3.1, but then you do not have any history at all because CON: doesn't have it anymore.

Then we have a couple of bug fixes as well: The $? operator that checks for the presence of a variable only worked for environment variables, but not for local variables.

We also have now "&&" as a new shell operator which sequences commands, but does not concatenate outputs. That is, || is a "concatenating pipe", and "&&" is sequential execution of commands.

As the dos.library has now a stderr stream, error output redirection with *> makes now sense, and all the shell internal commands and the commands in C: have been reworked to make use of it.

If you had two variables near each other such as $foo$foo, the shell failed to expand the second variable if there was no space between them. This was due to a mixup in the parser state machine that has been fixed.

The Execute command became a shell internal. There is no longer the need to make it resident to allow recursive execution as it is already part of the shell. An old version of execute as stand-alone will ship on the Install3.2: disk.

The input stream of shell scripts can now be redirected with "<filename" as well, i.e. if "S:foo" is a script "S:foo <bla" pipes the file "bla" into the stdin of the commands in S:foo. This never worked before. In fact, input and output redirection of scripts never worked before.

Input redirection with << did not work for some shell commands due to a mixup in the BCPL buffered IO.

The shell accepts a new shell variable,  "debug". If "debug" is set to "on", the shell prints all the commands it executes through the serial port, at 9600 8N1, for debugging purposes. Usually, however, then the new kickstart component "syslog" sits there and picks them up, and redirects them to RAM: so you can see what happened. There will be more to say about "syslog" and the new boot menu in another episode.

More components: dos.

The dos.library was actually Tripos, an operating system of its own until CBM bought it, and integrated it into AmigaOs. For Os 2.0, the BCPL source was completely replaced by an assembler/C implementation that came from "arp", the "Amiga Replacement Project", available independently for Kickstart 1.3.

For 3.2, we made more modifications to this antique core. First, we have a new dos.library function that acts as a "hook" whenever the dos.library attempts to bring up the "Please insert..." requester. An external program can hook in there, and can improve the requester, or offer more choices. In fact, Os 3.2 ships with such a program, namely "AssignWedge". The AssignWedge offers the functionality to also mount a handler, or deny a request for a specific volume from that point on. The "Assign" command can then be used to remove such a permanent denial.

Then we have an increased stack size for built-in handlers. In 3.1.4 and before, SetPatch took care of increasing their stack, but the defaults have never been touched. In 3.2, these defaults grew. It is, however, no longer the dos.library that mounts them, see below

The System() call received new tags: SYS_Error specifies an error output stream, which is mirrored by the CreateNewProc tags NP_Error and NP_CloseError that never worked before. This error ouptut stream defaults to the standard output if not defined, but may be given to redirect error messages to a separate stream. The shell offered support for error redirection since ever by means of the "*>" redirection token, but it wasn't very useful since many commands did not use it.

This changes for 3.2: First, the dos.library internal function PrintFault() uses it now, and we have also new calls to receive it (ErrorOutput()), to write a string through it (PutErrStr()) or to change it (SelectError()). All internal commands and commands in C: have been extended to use this new error stream, allowing you to separate error from regular output. Note well: If there is no error output redirection, the error output goes into the standard output for compatibility reasons, but if "*>" is explicitly given, stderr goes to some separate file.

Then, we have SYS_CmdStream as a new tag for System(), which tells the call that instead of taking the commands to be executed from a file rather than its first argument. This sounds fairly harmless, but provides an important new feature. Before that, let me also say that SYS_Asynch now also works for System() in case the command string is empty, and thus if SYS_CmdStream is used instead.

Now, what is all the fuzz about it? With SYS_CMdStream = Open("S:Shell-Startpup"), SYS_Output=Open("CON:") and SYS_ASync=TRUE, you can now create a new CLI, similar to "NewShell". Actually, the "NewShell" command and SYS:System/CLI do now exactly that, and the archaic and undocumented method by which NewShell used to operate is opsolete and has been removed. One piece of BCPL junk less, yay!

This said, the whole interface towards the shell has been simplified. We used to have three (actually, four!) methods how a shell can be launched: One at system startup, one when the user used the "Run" command or the "System()" dos.library function, and one for "NewShell", and the shell had to fiddle out what the user wanted to do, and then had to call into three also mostly or completely undocumented functions, CliInit(), CliInitNewCli() and CliInitRun() to get initialized.

This is of course utterly complex and error prone. Now that "NewCli" goes through "System()", "CliInitNewCli()" is obsolete and no longer needed. And, due to another change, "CliInit()" is also obsolete. I come to that in a minute.

So, what happens if the system boots up: Well, the dos.library is initialized, then the dos.library used to initalize the shell, then starts the shell, the shell is supposed to understand what the system wants from it through an archaic and mysterious interface whose documenation is hard to find and to digest, then calls into CliInit(). CliInit() then mounts all the handlers, opens the startup-sequence, and returns to the shell, which then runs the startup-sequence. Thus, this used to be like "ping-poing":

Dos->(CreateProc())->Shell->(CliInit()->)Dos->Shell

Yummie. All this changed in 3.2. The system startup procedure which was part of the mysterious and undocumented CliInit() function was removed from the dos.library whatsoever, and moved into a separate system component, "System-Startup". It resides in ROM, or in L: for those that go for a software-only upgrade, and is loaded there by LoadModule. So the procedure looks like this now:

Dos->(CreateProc())-System-Startup->Shell.

No ping-pong. What System-Startup does is what CliInit() used to do, and a lot more. So it mounts all the handlers, all the volumes, creates the default assigns like S:, DEVS:, L: and C:, and then creates the boot shell, by the mechanism discussed above: System(), with SYS_CMDStream=Open("S:Startup-Sequence") and SYS_OUtput=Open("CON:...").

Thus, CliInitNewCli() done for good, CliInit() done for good, and the only init mechanism the shell is left with is CliInitRun(), everything else was removed. Thus, no longer any guesswork as what to call, and a very simple mechanism to get the shell going.

We have a couple of other improvements as well:
- ExAll() had a bug by forgetting to pass an argument to a potential error requester and thus could crash or show nonsense on errors.

- All the BCPL inherited I/O functions such as FWrite or FRead were terribly slow. They made single-byte-I/O, going through three function layers to get data, and thus delayed all operations down that depended on them, such as the icon.library which uses FRead to read icons. FRead() and FWrite() have been rewritten to make fast block I/O, and "burst" directly into the user buffer if possible without going through an internal buffer, hopefully also speeding up the icon.library and many other system components that use them.

- System() ignored the NP_Name tag. Instead, a new process created by it was always named "Background CLI". Now you can name it as you like. For example, "Initial CLI", the name used by System-Startup (obviously!).

- System() had more problems in erraneously releasing file handles in case of failure. The interface specification say that the file handles remain open and untouched in case of failure, but did not always do so. This might have caused hard to trace bugs in low-memory situations.

- There was some confusion about the stack size of file handlers. Unfortunately, the default stack size of a handler is measured in bytes for C-style handlers, and in long words for BCPL-style handlers, thus caused some mismatch if the dos.library adjusted them. In fact, the 3.1 SetPatch increased the stack size of the internal handlers to something like 16K instead of 4K due to this mismatch in units. We fixed that.

- Speaking of stack sizes, handlers may now contain a magic "$STACK:" token that indicates a minimum stack size they want to have. If such a stack token is present, the default stack size is increased to this minimum size. It is always measured in bytes, regardless of the handler type. Thus, there is no longer any guessing necessary as what to put into the "Stack" mount line as the handler can communicate this now itself.

- WFPrintf() has some issues with invalid templates for its arguments.

- Speaking about the ROMWack, I already mentioned in exec that the exec default exception handler preserves now registers for the system debugger. Unfortunately, the dos.library default Alert requester ("Software error, Task held...") did not. Now, 3.2 will fix that and the Alert requester will store the stack frame away and restore it when the system debugger kicks in. Thus, post-mortem debugging with ROMWack should finally work again. This was broken somewhere on the road from Kickstart 1.2 to 1.3 (yes, really that old!).

- Mounting BCPL handlers leaked 20 bytes of memory. Another fix of an ancient bug.

- Finally, the CLI structure was extended. It now contains also the history. The new ExtendedCommandLineInterface structure is created by AllocDosObject(), and you better use that function to create CLIs as otherwise the "history" command of the shell does not work. Of course, all system functions use it, and as of 3.2, ARexx was updated to go through AllcoDosObject() instead of rolling its own CLI. As said, legacy code that does not will continue to work, but then "history" will print an error as the CLI is unextended. The shell will continue to work, though. I haven't observed this case in the wild, yet, as most programs create CLIs through either System() or "NewCLI" and both are of course fine.

There is more that needs to be said about System-Startup as this new system module does now a lot more than CliInit(), but I leave this for a later episode. This one is long enough.

More progress: Expansion.

There were still some interesting issues in expansion. In case a RAM-board was unsized and requested auto-sizing by the Os, the Os overwrote the last byte behind the indicated slot size and thus might have trashed another expansion sitting behind it. This was still an old bug from 3.x times of which I do not know when exactly it was made.

Another old bug was the A3000 superkickstart support. What this does is that the code attempts to check whether the MMU is active, and maps the upper 512K RAM to a kickstart image. If so, the A3000 expansion skips this memory region, and does not insert it into the memory list. Or at least, it attempted to do so. Due to a logic error, expansion tested the wrong bit in the MMU configuration register and thus tested the bit whether there is a supervisor MMU table present, and only performed the mapping *if not so*. Instead, it should have tested the MMU-enable bit, and perform the superkickstart logic only if this bit is *set* (not clear). This stole 512K for A3000 users using the mmu.library which does enable the MMU, and uses "supervisor" MMU tables. The 3.1.4.1 SetPatch installs a workaround to merge the upper 512K into the memory list in such cases, though 3.2 will fix the problem at its root. Again, an old bug that survived.

Then, another issue with file systems. Expansion configures file systems with 600 bytes of stack, which is a bit short. This increases now to 1024 bytes. Actually, it is more complicated that this: The stack size in the DosList structure is measured in bytes for C-style handlers, and in longwords for BCPL-style handlers. Thus, if expansion leaves there a "256", this is fine for BCPL style handlers (256*4=1024), but way, way, way too short for C-style handlers (256 bytes!). This problem was addressed in the dos.library and system-startup, though.

AmigaOS 3.2 is currently in development and there is no set release date. Here I will, with the permission of Thomas Richter, post some of his personal updates on the development.

FS-UAE 3.0.2 has been released.

Changes in FS-UAE Launcher 3.0.1:

Scanner bug prevented Conquests of the Longbow WHDLoad to be recognized.
The correct kickstart wasn’t always loaded.
Cloanto ROMs were not always decrypted.
Fix for global WHDLoad quit key.

Changes in FS-UAE Launcher 3.0.2

Another fix for global WHDLoad quit key.
Fixed a misleading warning when cyberstorm ROM was not found (3.0.1).

Direct Download link.