Beginner's guide to building your own copy of vDos
Run DOS applications in Windows.
Brought to you by:
emendelson,
josschaars
Here is a beginner's guide to building a copy of vDos from the sources. There is only one reason to do this: If you want to make your own copy of vDos that includes changes in the source code, as suggested in various posts on his forum. This procedure was tested under Windows 8.1, but should work with any recent Windows version.
This assumes a basic understanding of Windows software (for example, you should know how to open .7z archives). You will be able to do very little with the source code unless you know something about C++, but you may be able to make some useful changes with very little knowledge.
If you have any questions about these instructions, you should be able to figure out the answers for yourself by experimenting or by searching the internet.
Download the vDos source code; start by visiting this page: http://sourceforge.net/projects/vdos/files/
On that page, click on the name of the most recent version (the one at the top of the list) and download the file named Sources.7z.
Use a standard archive manager (e.g. 7zFM.exe) to extract the vDos folder from the archive to any convenient place on your system (such as your desktop).
Download the free Visual Studio Community Edition from the Download link on this page: https://www.visualstudio.com/products/free-developer-offers-vs
Run the downloaded installation program, and proceed as follows.
Check the box where you agree to the license terms; click Next.
Remove the checkmarks from everything on the list of “Optional features to install”; click Install and proceed through the installation. At the end, do not click “Launch" but simply close the installation program.
In the vDos folder that you dragged to your disk in step 3, open the visualc_net folder and double-click on vDos.sln.
When Visual Studio opens, you can sign in with a Microsoft account if you want, or you can ignore the sign-in option.
Visual Studio will offer to upgrade the VC++ Compiler and Libraries. Click OK.
In the Solution Explorer on the left you will see vDos in bold. Right-click on it, and choose Build from the pop-up menu, and wait while the project builds.
When the Output window shows “Build: 1 succeeded…”, go back to the vDos folder and go to the vDos\bin folder. You will find the copy of vDos.exe that you built.
You may now experiment with the vDos source code and rebuild vDos to experiment with the results of your changes.
You may close Microsoft Visual Studio after building vDos.
Last edit: Edward Mendelson 2015-05-09
View and moderate all "Advanced" comments posted by this user
Mark all as spam, and block user from posting to "Discussion"
Great Job, but what about to build on Linux..?
Is possible build using MinGW on Linux..?
Currently i am using dosemu vm, but vdos looks very nice and i will give a try..
Thank you..
It's impossible to build vDos on Linux or any non-Windows OS. Anyone who wants to try to port it to another OS is of course free to do so (because it is open source) but it will require a tremendous amount of effort.
You may be able to build a "wrapper" for it using Wine (as I have done under OS X), but that's the only practical way to manage it right now.
View and moderate all "Advanced" comments posted by this user
Mark all as spam, and block user from posting to "Discussion"
Yes, many thanks. Have done all that and made the modifications to the code. Not working exactly yet but will persevere. One question: if I edit the source using Vis Studio and update the 7Z zip on completion, does the build use that or is there another copy somewhere ?
The 7z archive is only a way to get the source code from Sourceforge to your system. You can delete the 7z archive after extracting the vDos folder from it.