Interested to know what people consider to be the minimum set of must have third party API libraries that every user should have installed and every developer (all 3 of them) should consider essential to Amiga development?

I have a few I'd like to nominate, aside from the obvious defacto 'extensions' to the OS like P96, AHI, MUI and some version of bsdsocket and C='s own camd. My list would include:

- asyncio library from Martin Taillefer as used in TurboText2
- guigfx and render libraries
- z.library, which has in fact made itself part of OS4
- AmiSSL obviously
- mpega.library
- Thor's MMU lib albeit mostly useful only for developers

Also on OS4 the va.library and ffmpeg port

I'm not counting straight lib* ports like cairo, SDL etc. i mean Amiga specific APIs.

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Mobileconnect Quote:

Interested to know what people consider to be the minimum set of must have third party API libraries that every user should have installed and every developer (all 3 of them) should consider essential to Amiga development? I have a few I'd like to nominate, aside from the obvious defacto 'extensions' to the OS like P96, AHI, MUI and some version of bsdsocket and C='s own camd. My list would include: - asyncio library from Martin Taillefer as used in TurboText2

I recall asyncio.library support being removed from a program as not worthwhile do to being slower in some cases and buggy versions causing problems.

Mobileconnect Quote:

- guigfx and render libraries

The 68k version was old and buggy as I recall. Typical 68k Amiga is a 2nd class citizen treatment even as Hyperion and AmigaKit survive off of it with their Amiga IP squatting.

Mobileconnect Quote:

- z.library, which has in fact made itself part of OS4 - AmiSSL obviously - mpega.library - Thor's MMU lib albeit mostly useful only for developers

The mmu.library would be more useful if the 68k AmigaOS optionally used it more. Again, the 68k AmigaOS is designated to emulation duties without a MMU as a 2nd class citizen though.

Mobileconnect Quote:

Also on OS4 the va.library and ffmpeg port I'm not counting straight lib* ports like cairo, SDL etc. i mean Amiga specific APIs.

- codesets.library should not be necessary with AmigaOS UTF-8 support but is invaluable until then
- ttf.library adds a truetype font engine
- camd.library for MIDI support
- XAD/XFD xadmaster.library was included in AmigaOS 3.9 for compression/decompression
- Warp3D.library should be part of AmigaOS but not happening with A-EonKit protectionism
- Warp3DNova.library should be part of AmigaOS but not happening with A-EonKit commercialism
- rtgmaster.library was useful for c2p/RTG although most newer systems have chunky support now

I would have thought a shared SDL and POSIX library would be popular but SDL ports never standardized (at least 3 different versions?) and Frank Wille's POSIX library remains a link library as many developers use just a few functions as they convert their programs to the Amiga.

The AmigaOS is diverging into different factions with different ownership/licenses instead of converging with popular libraries added as standard. I suppose it is a wish list though.

@matthey

Thanks for the response. I think you're correctly guessing where I'm heading with this.

You're write that AmigaOS is splintering, it has been for 30 years but the actions of A-EON and AmigaKit, of Apollo/Gunnar, and the arrival of mature AROS, are all contributing to taking that further than ever before.

There's a whole separate discussion to be had I think about saying, what is the baseline 'core amiga compatible OS' and 'additional layer of APIs and libraries' that can be considered the standard 'power users baseline set of APIs'. It might help developers to do more with less, by not constantly repeating work already done, if there were 'known good' third party libraries to count on, much as arp.library tried to do in the 1.x days. Well sure there are not many developers left, but the barriers to entry for new ones who are interested, and there are some, are high. One of those barriers is lack of a common 'definition' of a set of APIs one can guarantee to have available.

That said I'm surprised and never heard of issues with asyncio before, after all Martin T is one of the legends.

I agree on codesets - the kind of compatibility break switching to multibyte characters would force means i think we're stuck forever with OS level single byte characers, and application specific multibyte support rather than universal multibyte support.

camd is defacto an amiga asset anyway. but yes agree it's there.

ttf.library is a plugin for bullet so is not a developer API but yes agree it or freetype should be a part of any power users install

the warp stuff I agree, and for me falls into same category as AHI, va.library etc.

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@Mobileconnect

AmiSSL doesn't make sense without TCP/IP

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @Mobileconnect AmiSSL doesn't make sense without TCP/IP

It has its offline use cases too, but besides that, "some version of bsdsocket" was mentioned.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Quote:

kolla wrote: besides that, "some version of bsdsocket" was mentioned.

True, I have not seen it.