Contributing
To contribute to the emulators
package, do the following:
Checkout
emulators
repository
git clone https://github.com/js-dos/emulators
Install emscripten sdk, and confgure environment to use it.
Now you can build everything with
gulp
command
Native part of emulators is a plain cmake project, you can open it in your favorite editor. The Project has the following targets:
sokol
- js-dos v7 native version: dosbox + UI based on sokol. This version is exactly the same as the web version. You should use this target to contribute to js-dos v7.direct
- target is used to build the web-direct version of js-dos v7. You can compile it only with emscripten.worker
- target is used to build the web-worker version of js-dos v7. You can compile it only with emscripten.dosbox
- original version of dosbox (UI based on SDL). You can use it to compare behaviour between original dosbox and js-dos v7.libzip
- shared codes that contain implementation of zip.jsdos
- shared codes that contain implementation of dosbox.
Protocol
The idea of new js-dos v7 is that all targets (native and web) have exactly the same way to communicate between a client (native UI, browser UI) and dosbox.
Server
For simplicity, you can think that the server is a dosbox. In the future, servers can be implemented with different emulators. Now we support only dosbox implementation (look at jsdos.cmake
).
server_run()
Client should run this function when it's ready to start dosbox. This function will start the emulator. Client should prepare a file system for dosbox it expects that cwd
contains .jsdos/dosbox.conf
file.
So you need to extract js-dos bundle in some directory and start sokol binary in this directory, and it will act exactly in the same way as direct/worker dosbox.
server_add_key(keycode, pressed, timeMs)
This function adds keycode to the queue. They will be processed when dosbox poll keyboard events.
server_exit()
Terminates execution of dosbox and free resources.
Client
Direct, worker, and sokol implementations share the same code for server part. But they are completely different, because they implement UI and sound system for different platforms. In the original dosbox this was made by SDL, it was hard-coupled with dosbox. js-dos clearly detach the emulator from its ui. You can easily add new UI/sound system to dosbox.
For example, let's look at sokol UI implementation. You can use it to debug and develop new features for js-dos. Worker is a primary web implementation for js-dos v7. sokol implementation tries to work in a similar way: we start dosbox emulator in main thread and client in new thread.
client_frame_set_size(width, height)
When the server starts, it will send the frame size of the dosbox window by invoking client_frame_set_size
. You should allocate rgba buffer to store frame content. This function will be called each time when dosbox window size is changed.
client_frame_update_lines(lines, count, rgba)
This method will be called each time if contents of dosbox window are changed. dosbox implementation will send only changed lines. You need to update your frame buffer correctly.
Dirty region format (lines argument):
line number [0, height)
count of changed lines
offset in passed buffer (rgba argument)
Implementing client_frame_set_size
and client_frame_update_lines
is enough to render dosbox window:
client_sound_init(freq);
Called when the dosbox needs to initialize the sound system.
client_sound_push(samples, num_samples)
This method is called each time when new sound samples should be pushed to audio device. With sokol implementation is very simple:
client_stdout(data, amount)
This method will be called each time when dosbox prints something to its console.
Communicate to server
Each time when key is pressed we should send event to dosbox:
When user closes sokol window we need to stop server:
That is. Check complete source of sokol implementation.
Testing
If the gulp
command is finished successfully then you can run emulators tests. To do this, run a static web server to host the dist
directory. For example, with http-server
:
and open test page in browser:
all tests should pass.
Running native js-dos v7
As said above, you need to compile a sokol
target with your favorite C++ toolkit. It will generate sokol
executable. Next, you need to download some js-dos bundle for example digger.
js-dos bundle
is a plain zip archive, you need to extract it in some folder. After that you should run sokol
executable from that folder (cwd must be the root of the extracted bundle).
Using Docker
You can use docker image to develop emulators core. The image has already configured everything to build emulators core and start emulators tests.
Build image
Test image
Open http://localhost:8080
in browser, all tests should pass
Development
Run inside the project directory:
Use your code editor to edit the content of src and test. In the docker VM you can run gulp
to build everything into dist
OR use ./node_modules/.bin/tsc --watch
if you need only compile time checks.
Contributing on github
To contribute your code please create PR on github, and check if all tests passed.