dos-rs

Create DOS protected mode programs with Rust!

Wait, what!? Why?

Because it is possible!

How?

This (ab)uses the fact that the Watcom linker can consume elf objects. The Rust code creates a static library that then gets linked with a small OMF object, that just defines a stack segment, into a dos32x executable, using the dos32a extender.

The idea is that the dos::* and dpmi::* modules will support all int 21h and DPMI calls, respectively.

Dev setup

This uses Nix for pulling in dependencies and creating a dev environment. Install Nix and issue nix-shell in the directory to get a shell with all the tools.

If you are not using Nix, you will need

• GNU Make
• Rust nightly
• OpenWatcom (with $WATCOM pointing to the installation)
• Dosbox/MS-DOS/FreeDOS etc. for running the code

To build all examples, use make. To build a specific example, use make <example-name>. The resulting executables can then be run with dosbox (included in the shell) or on MS-DOS/FreeDOS etc.