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make DOS compile fool-proof (almost ;-)
Use autoconf macro to select GCC and abort if not available.

You need DJ Delorie's port of GCC to DOS (DJGPP) to compile Gforth. DJGPP
provides a DOS extender (GO32) that allows to use the 32-bit features of
the 80386, but on the other hand it requires at least an 386.

Gforth hasn't been tested with EMX, using EMX will require some changes in
the console IO part. If you don't want to install this package (quite
large), look for a binary distribution of Gforth for DOS. You must have a
version of GNU make, because DOS make programs are likely to have problems
with the Makefile. If you want to change Gforth, you may need GNU m4, too.

If you don't bother and want to make it yourself, type

configure

There are no options for configure, because DOS can't execute a real
configure script, all the configuring stuff is done on a real operating
system. If you want to change something (e.g. use FORCE_REG or
DIRECT_THREADED), you have to change the makefile yourself. Be careful! DOS
command line arguments are limited to an overall size of 126 bytes, so
adding a new define in the makefile will make it too long. In this case add
the define at the beginning of machine.h instead, or create a file
containing all extra options, and add @<filename> to the defines (move the
-DDEFAULTPATH-define into this file, and it will fit into the command line).

After covering all inconveniences, type

make gforth

and after this finishes, type

make

We apologize for the inconveniences, we did not invent the 640k limit
that prevents doing make straight forward. You may run out of memory
anyway, because GCC eats up lots of it while compiling engine.c. Keep
enough space free on your harddisk to allow GCC to swap.

If you want to add some defines like -DFORCE_REG, type

make gforth XDEFINES=-DFORCE_REG

instead.

Now you can check whether your shiny new Forth system works. Say

make test

You can run some benchmarks with

make bench

and compare them with the results in Benchres and in the manual.

Don't try to do "make install", it won't work, either. It is not possible to
"make dist" or "make bindist", too, because of the limitations of DOS
command lines.

Add the following entry to your Autoexec.bat:

SET GFORTHPATH=<your gforth source directory>:.

Use / instead of \ in your gforth source directory.  Another problem
is, that Gforth uses : as path separator, and DOS pathes may look like
D:/gforth.  Sorry, there is no workaround for this now.

For paper documentation, print gforth.ps (a Postscript file (300dpi
fonts, i.e., it works, but does not produce best quality on better
printers)), or say

make gforth.dvi

and print the resulting file gforth.dvi (you need TeX for that! But
with TeX you can print it even if you don't have a Postscript printer
nor Ghostscript).  You could be able to make a html version of the
document, but AFAIK there is no texi2html for DOS available, as there
is no perl available.