AmiWest 2013 Programming Conference Synopsis

The objective of this conference is to equip attendees with the information and tools they need to create useful Amiga software. Last year at AmiWest 2012, we covered a lot of the basics of AmigaOS. This year, I hope we can expand upon that and create some applications.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The conference room officially opens at 17:00. That gives us the evening to setup our systems, solve any networking issues and ensure everything is installed and working. We don't want to waste time on Thursday morning going through setup issues so please try hard to be there on Wednesday evening.

Please be sure you have the SDK installed and have CodeBench up and running on your AmigaOS system. Full instructions for how to do this are located on the AmiWest Setup page. Please go there now and review everything.

Those of you that are setup will be able to dive right into how to crash your machine. As any Amiga programmer knows, crashing an Amiga isn't very difficult. The trick is to figure out why it crashed and how to find that line in your source code which caused the problem. Interpreting the debug output of the Grim Reaper can be rather daunting and that is what we will be exploring.

Here is an example program from which we will start working:

#include <exec/types.h>
 
int main()
{
	uint32 *zero = 0;
	*zero = 0;
	return 0;
}

Although simple, this program will enable us to explore how to read the Reaper (serial port) and Grim Reaper (GUI) output. We will show you how to turn debugging symbols on and off. The stack trace will be our first stop on the road to figuring out just what happened and why.

There is also the Exec Debug Kernel which will be using to help us with debugging our programs.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

The focus will be on creating the basic structure for a GUI based application. The application will be runnable from either CLI or Workbench. Once again, debugging techniques will be explored including: DebugPrintF(), using Sashimi, interpreting the Grim Reaper output and how to use a debugger.

Friday, October 18, 2013

The focus will be on extending a GUI based application using AmigaOS services. Some examples include an ARexx port, using Application Library, using Commodities Library, using AmiDock and using Workbench. Depending on time, other topics could be discussed including networking, video and sound.

What do you want from the conference?

For anyone considering attending this conference, please feel free to make suggestions. Nothing is set in stone yet. This synopsis is still a work in progress. Please use the contact form at my web site to make your suggestions.