testexe

This repo builds a sample DOS .exe file and compresses it with various utilities.

It is intended to produce small files suitable for unit testing other code. gamecomp.js uses these files to confirm that the PKLite algorithm is correctly decompressing files, for example.

If you wish to use the files in your own test suite, you can simply copy them without running the code here. The uncompressed files are in the build/ folder, and the compressed files are in the compress/ folder.

• compress/t*.exe - PKLite compressed build/test-t.exe ("large" flag off)
• compress/h*.exe - PKLite compressed build/test-h.exe ("large" flag on)
• compress/[th]*r.exe - PKLite 'extra' flag used (to prevent decompression)
• compress/[th]*r.unc - Decompressed versions with normalised relocation tables. This is because PKLite with the 'extra' flag rewrites the relocation table to compress more efficiently, so upon decompression it cannot be restored back to the original values. This means comparing the decompressed data to build/test-[th].exe will fail due to the different relocation table. Instead, the original uncompressed .exe has its relocation table rewritten in the same way PKLite does, and this is stored as the .unc file. This means for files that have an .unc present, it should be used instead of build/test-[th].exe when comparing the decompressor output to the original .exe.

This repository includes a partial copy for Borland Turbo C v2.01, which is copyright 1987-1988 Borland International. This compiler has been graciously released as freeware by Borland and the full version including the IDE is available at https://archive.org/details/msdos_borland_turbo_c_2.01

This repository also includes a number of different versions of PKLite, including registered versions. PKWare does not seem to sell this product any longer and the files can be found freely online, so I am hoping it won't cause any problems by including them in this archive.

The EMU2 text-mode x86 + DOS emulator is used to run Turbo C. A copy is downloaded and built automatically as part of the compilation process. The CLI nature of the emulator means it is well suited to being part of a Makefile-based build process running natively on the host.