There is this nice C compiler for the Radio Shack Color Computer now called CMOC. It’s not very easy to get it working under windows and and even with Linux or a MAC it has some involved steps to get it working.
I was recently watching COCO TALK Podcast #43 and they had a discussion about CMOC. Somebody asked if a nice installer existed for it but Boisy Pitre mentioned that it involved some other tools and things to be installed and that made it “complicated”.
This got me thinking… what it it could be a little easier? It got me thinking about a tool called Vagrant. It is a tool that can take advantage of Virtual Machine software like Oracle VirtualBox (which is free). It turned out to be not so hard.
STEP 1
WINDOWS:
Vagrant requires the “Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86)” to be installed if you are running Windows. Download it from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=8328
Also, windows doesn’t normally have an SSH client… but GITHUB will install one.
In order to get an SSH client on Windows you can install Git. Git is used for version control, but
we’re interested in the SSH client that it ships with. Download git here:
http://mirror.linuxtrainingacademy.com/git/windows/
IMPORTANT: Tell the GIT installer to “USE GIT AND OPTIONAL UNIX TOOLS FROM THE WINDOWS COMMAND PROMPT”… for everything else, take defaults options.
STEP 2
Install VirtualBox from http://mirror.linuxtrainingacademy.com/virtualbox/
Load the right one for your particular operating system. Some versions might require a few extra steps… but the Oracle site has good documentation.
Accept defaults for the installation.
STEP 3
Install Vagrant from http://mirror.linuxtrainingacademy.com/vagrant/
Accept defaults for the installation.
STEP 4
Start a command line session on your local machine. (Windows “Command prompt”, Linux/MAC “Terminal session”
STEP 5
Add A BOX to Vagrant.
A “box” in Vagrant speak is an operating system image. The “vagrant box add ” command will download and store that box on your local system. You only need to download a box once as this image will be cloned when you create a new virtual machine with Vagrant using the box’s name.
I created a box specifically for this solution and uploaded it to the public Vagrant box catalog. Run the following command on your local machine to download it.
vagrant box add pwillard/ubuntu6809cmoc
STEP 6
To work with Vagrant, we need to create a working folder: “mkdir cmoc“
Next, we move to that folder: “cd cmoc“
Now we need set up out working environment in this folder: “vagrant init pwillard/ubuntu6809cmoc“
This will create the local files needed in this folder to refer to the BOX we will be using. So now, its time to bring up our virtual environment. The contents of the “Vagrant” file can be as simple as:
Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
config.vm.box = "pwillard/Ubuntu6809cmoc"
config.vm.box_version = "1.0.0"
end
“vagrant up“
The first time you run the “vagrant up ” command Vagrant will import (clone) the vagrant box into VirtualBox and start it. If Vagrant detects that the virtual machine already exists in VirtualBox it will simply start it. By default, when the virtual machine is started, it is started in headless mode
meaning there is no UI for the machine visible on your local host machine.
It will do some steps and return to a command prompt. You can check status with:
“vagrant status“
If the machine is in the “running”state, you are ready to use it.
“vagrant ssh“
This will open a SSH terminal session to the Linux environment built into the supplied vagrant BOX file. You should see something like the following for a prompt:
vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-32:~$
One of the nice features of vagrant is that you can have a shared folder between the vagrant Ubuntu machine and your host PC that is the folder you started the session from. This directory on your PC now has a file in it called Vagrantfile. This is the configuration file for your virtual Linux machine.
You should be able to “cd /vagrant” at the vagrant@vagrant-ubuntu-trusty-32:~$ prompt. You should also be able to see the “Vagrantfile“. If not, you might need to edit the “Vagrantfile” to contain the following line:
config.vm.synced_folder “.”, “/vagrant”, enabled: true
If you needed to add this line, then exit the SSH session, and type: “vagrant reload” and the “vagrant ssh“. You should now have a working shared folder.
With these steps done, you should have a system where you can type handy developer commands like “cmoc“, or “lwasm” or even “decb” and have them actually work. (You didn’t need to install them yourself)