DOS/4G and DOS/4GW FAQ:
Watcom Compatibility

1. What versions of Watcom are you compatible with?
2. Why doesn't my program work with Watcom 11.0 when DOS4GW.EXE is situated in the same directory as the executing program?
3. Isn't Watcom out of business?
4. Doesn't that mean that the Watcom compiler is no longer available?
5. Doesn't that mean that the Watcom compiler is no longer supported?

1. What versions of Watcom are you compatible with?

We are compatible with versions 10.0, 10.5, 10.6 and 11.0 (but see version 11.0 problem below.) All of these versions use the same DOS/4GW version, 1.97.

If you would like a more modern version of DOS/4GW, check out version 2.01 upgrade.

2. Why doesn't my program work with Watcom 11.0 when DOS4GW.EXE is situated in the same directory as the executing program?

The first argument on the command line is not passed to DOS4GW. This is a bug in the version 11.0 wstub.exe which apparently was caused by a bug in a prerelease version the Watcom 16-bit compiler.

We have provided a fixed version of wstub.exe in the file wstub.zip from our FTP site: ftp.tenberry.com/pub/wstub.zip.

3. Isn't Watcom out of business?

Not exactly. Watcom was wholly acquired by Powersoft.

Powersoft was later wholly acquired by Sybase.

Sybase discontinued development on the C/C++ compiler.

4. Doesn't that mean that the Watcom compiler is no longer available?

As a commercial product, yes.

However, the C/C++ compilers have been released as an open-source project. For details, goto http://www.openwatcom.org.

5. Doesn't that mean that the Watcom compiler is no longer supported?

As a commercial product, yes.

However, the Watcom compiler was quite reliable and well debugged when Sybase stopped work on it, so you are unlikely to need any support.

There is a growing community of developers, in addition to the team from SciTek, who are working on the product. So far, there work has been focused on all the work necessary to remove the proprietary parts of the original Watcom product.

In addition, because the source for every part of the compiler and library can be downloaded, you can fix small problems yourself. This is particularly helpful for customizing the run-time library.

For details, goto http://www.openwatcom.org.