Updating the XTools

The XTools that are in SYS:Utilities/Xena were originally written by Segher Boessenkool and then adapted to AmigaOS 4 by Lyle Hazelwood. The sources are supplied in the drawer, but I’ve also added them to an SVN repo at sourceforge:

• sourceforge.net/p/xena-xtools.

Building

Building is straight-forward:

make -f makefile-amiga

In the sourceforge repo this also works on Amiga now – there was a typo causing XPRegs to not be built.

Chain too long

I’ve so far done a few minor fixes, for instance when there was an error it sometimes didn’t close the xena.resource. The error usually seen is fatal: chain too long.

fatal: chain too long

Only builds with SDK 53.24

In normal circumstances there are no errors, so it’s not major thing. However, the error always shows up if you build the XTools with a newer SDK. I’ve found that you need to have SDK 53.24 in order to build and also run the XTools. Because even if the sources compiles with a later SDK, when you run it, you’ll get the chain too long error.

SDK 53.24 is still downloadable from Hyperions website.

Doesn’t run on X5000?

The same error has been spotted on the X5000, even when XTools are built with the correct SDK. I don’t know the reason for this; I also don’t own a X5000, so testing is difficult. I will investigate further and also file a bug report.

Future improvements

I have som ideas for future improvements, and having the sources in a repository should hopefully help with keeping track of that. First thing I’d like to get is support for the X5000.

Suggestions and fixes are welcome!