AmigaOS 3.2 — What Changed for Developers (V40 → V47)¶

This article captures the developer-facing delta from AmigaOS 3.1 / NDK 3.1 (V39/V40) — the baseline the rest of this wiki documents — to AmigaOS 3.2 (NDK 3.2 Release 1, V47, 2021). AmigaOS 3.2 is the Hyperion Entertainment continuation of the OS. The lineage is: the 3.1.4 project (V45, 2016-2018) → the 3.2 project (V46/V47, 2019-2021).

The NDK 3.2 ReadMe-NDK.txt notes: "more than seventeen years after the last AmigaOS 68k NDK," and "tools, examples, and other components from previous NDKs are not needlessly duplicated here" — so the 3.1 NDK and the 3.2 NDK are complementary, not a superset/replace relationship. This article covers what materially changed for someone writing or porting Amiga software.

Version numbers at a glance¶

Version	Meaning
V33-V36	Kickstart 1.2-2.0
V37	AmigaOS 2.0 (this wiki's `getting-started` baseline)
V39	AmigaOS 3.0 ("AA", Advanced Amiga)
V40	AmigaOS 3.1 (NDK 3.1 — the original wiki baseline)
V45	AmigaOS 3.1.4 project (2016-2018)
V46/V47	AmigaOS 3.2 project (2019-2021); V47.1 ships on the CD (`$VER: AmigaOS 3.2 CD-ROM Release 47.1`)
V50	Reserved API slots; some functions implemented early in V47

If your code does runtime version checks, the relevant thresholds are V45 (3.1.4 behavior changes) and V47 (3.2). Always check Library->lib_Version, and note that V50 functions exist in the V47 jump table as reserved slots — test for their presence, do not assume.

exec.library — features removed, pools fixed¶

The biggest exec changes are removals, not additions. Code that touched these private/unfinished APIs will hit a recoverable alert under 3.2:

Task trees removed. "These functions were never fully functional and were incomplete." Any use ends in a recoverable alert and returns zero.
AVL trees removed. ROM space is precious; high-level data structures belong in a separate library. Any use ends in a recoverable alert and returns zero.
Memory pools reverted to the V40 puddle-based scheme (Allocate() on puddles) — "just without the V40 bugs." Released puddles bubble to the top immediately.

Other exec notes: coldstart now detects a 68060 FPU and suppresses the bogus FPU-present report (the 68060.library owns that role). ROMWack is back in place of the SAD debug kernel. On 68040+, ExitIntr does an extra custom-register access to suppress spurious interrupts.

See exec.library Reference for the V40 baseline; the SAD section there is superseded — Status: Outdated — ROMWack replaced SAD in V46.37.

dos.library — finally-correct features and V50 additions¶

Several V40 promises are fulfilled in 3.2, plus genuinely new functions:

NP_Error / NP_CloseError finally work, "unlike V40, which claimed to support it, but in fact did not." For V40 compatibility, NP_Error defaults to NULL (not Open("NIL:",...)) and NP_CloseError to FALSE (not TRUE).
New V50 functions: PutErrStr(), GetCurrentDir() / GetCurrentDirName(), ErrorOutput(), SelectErrorOutput(), VolumeRequestHook(), DoShellMethodTagList(). Multiple other V50 slots are reserved.
System() gains SYS_CmdStream (command input as a stream), SYS_Async (now works with NULL command — a replacement for NewCLI), and SYS_InName/SYS_CmdName/SYS_OutName (open streams in the shell's context). NP_Name is now honored (V40 ignored it, always naming the process "Background CLI").
CliInitNewCli() and CliInit() are obsolete — both now dead-end alert. Shell startup uses CliInitRun() exclusively.
The *Printf family is buffered (permanently enabled in V47.23). On an A3000 030@25MHz, throughput for medium strings improved by up to ~3.9x over the byte-at-a-time BCPL implementation.
Default stack sizes raised for CON:, RAW:, PRT:, SER:, PAR:, RAM: and the FFS.

intuition.library — iconify, scrollwheel, hotkeys, richer DrawInfo¶

3.2 substantially modernizes the GUI without breaking the classic event loop:

Iconify gadget is first-class. Request WA_IconifyGadget,TRUE (WA_Dummy + 0x60). Pressing it delivers IDCMP_WindowClose with msg->Code = 1 (hide only) rather than 0 (close). MultiView implements this protocol. ShowWindow()/HideWindow() are reimplemented (V50-derived) and run through the input event handler to avoid races; ShowWindow() takes a second arg — the window to show in front of.
Native scrollwheel support at the OS level (V47.26). Shift-click the zoom gadget = maximize. Ctrl+left/right in string gadgets jumps to line ends.
GA_Underscore / GA_ActivateKey (backported from OS4) give gadgets and EasyRequest buttons keyboard hotkeys. MIF_SHIFTCOMMSEQ (0x0800) enables Shift+Amiga-key menu shortcuts.
SA_OpenBorder lets windows drag partly off-screen (requires layers V45; ON for Workbench, OFF elsewhere).
DrawInfo is now version 3. DRI_VERSION is 3 (was 2 for V39). One new pen, BARCONTOURPEN (0x000C), brings NUMDRIPENS to 13 (0x000D), and a new dri_Screen backpointer appears. BARCONTOURPEN colors the left/top edges of the screen bar and menus. Code that hard-codes NUMDRIPENS must be updated.
New OSERR_NORTGBITMAP (10) from OpenScreen when a tagged RTG bitmap allocation fails. New sysiclass images: MENUSUB (the proper submenu arrow, replacing the ASCII 187 "»" GadTools used), plus FRAME_PROPBORDER, FRAME_PROPKNOB, FRAME_DISPLAY. New FRAMEF_MINIMAL flag for IM_FRAMEBOX.
Mutually-exclusive menu items render as radio buttons, not checkmarks. Configurable sizing-gadget aspect (18×14 / 18×16 / 18×18 / 18×20) for square-pixel high-res screens.
IntuitionControlA() is a new multi-purpose entry point; jump-table slots were reserved to match the OS 4.x intuition.library layout.
Screen bitmaps now allocate via the tagged AllocBitMap() (V39 AllocBitMap + tags), with the ModeID placed on the tag list, falling back to the legacy allocator on failure.

graphics.library, layers.library, gadtools.library¶

graphics: GetDisplayInfo()/SetDisplayInfo() now reach private/extended display-info elements. A BestModeID() cast bug (lower 16 bits of a tag address used — false negatives at 64K boundaries) is fixed. ClearRectRegion() no longer mangles regions with >1 RegionRectangle.
layers (V50 functions present in V47): LayerOccluded(), HideLayer(), ShowLayer(), SetLayerInfoBounds(). Superbitmap code simplified; newlayer() pre-allocates cliprects to avoid races.
gadtools: new NG_GRIDLAYOUT flag; new GTVI_MinFontWidth/GTVI_MinFontHeight; read-only GTLV_Total/GTLV_Visible; GTMX_ScaledSpacing; GTSC_Arrows accepts -1 ("square"). Submenus use the Intuition MENUSUB image (requires intuition ≥47.8) instead of the ASCII 187 glyph. FrameIClass gains FRAME_CONTEXT for bevel boxes.

utility.library — 64-bit math done right, length-limited strings¶

The 64-bit math routines return in proper register order (low 32 bits in d0, high 32 bits in d1). Added SDiv64/UDiv64. 68020 and 68060 specialized versions exist; the 68060 versions are not auto-enabled because exec does not identify the 68060 (the 68060.library does). The 68020-only build of utility is retired.
New V47 functions: VSNPrintf() (length-limited formatting), Strncpy(), Strncat(). VSNPrintf() was realigned to the OS 4.x LVO/register order — recompile code using it; the original V47 LVO survives as a wrapper for now.

locale.library — much faster, much stricter¶

FormatString() rewritten (permanently enabled V47.21). Because locale patches exec/RawDoFmt, this speeds up all formatted output; on an A3000 030@25MHz short-string RawDoFmt() is up to 5.06x faster. The number-conversion buffer shrank to 100 chars (from 200); %s is no longer capped at 65535 chars.
GetCatalogStr() uses a sorted lookup table + binary search for catalogs with ≥128 entries (a non-recursive qsort() avoids pulling in the SAS/C runtime).
Catalog loading is hardened: it validates the STRS, language, and version chunks and string bounds, and rejects malformed catalogs. FormatString() positional args (%5$s) are limited to 128.
GetCatalogStr() deliberately preserves the V38-V40 D1/A0/A1 register configuration because software (e.g. TurboCalc 3.5) depends on it.

Devices¶

timer.device / trackdisk.device add NSCMD_QUERY. trackdisk makes TD_ADDCHANGEINT/TD_REMCHANGEINT safe and adds a CPU-based MFM encoder plus TDInitBuffer()/TDU_* tags for 32-bit chip memory.

NDK 3.2 later releases (R2, R3, R4)¶

The tree above documents the R1 baseline (13.04.2021). Hyperion shipped three updates — R2 (31.05.2021), R3 (22.06.2021) and R4 (06.02.2022). R4 is the significant one for developers: its autodocs "for the first time in 35 years contain documentation on bugs and features never covered in detail before in the RKM text or in the AutoDocs" (8 libraries: amiga_lib, audio, commodities, dos, exec, graphics, locale, wb). R4 also adds two developer-doc articles, full trackfile.device/DAControl source, vbcc inline-header support, and Include_I/lvo/. See NDK 3.2 R2/R3/R4 Release Notes.

New R4 developer knowledge documented separately:

Interface Header Files — how clib/proto/pragmas/pragma/inline and amiga.lib stub code bridge C to register-based OS calls.
exec Memory Pools — the puddle/threshold scheme, sizing, and the show_memory_pool_insights() diagnostic.
trackfile.device — the ADF-backed virtual-floppy driver (full source in R4).

Third-party GUI: MUI¶

The 3.2 era also brought the third major GUI toolkit into scope. MUI — Magic User Interface (Stefan Stuntz, 1992-97, v3.8 dev archive) is the dominant third-party BOOPSI GUI system, distinct from both GadTools and ReAction: it provides a fully automatic layout engine and a declarative notification mechanism where the main loop is just a Wait().

New subsystems in NDK 3.2 (separate articles)¶

These did not exist in NDK 3.1 and have their own articles:

ReAction GUI Toolkit — BOOPSI-based gadget classes opened as libraries; the Examples/ tree ships ~40 demos.
mmu.library — Thomas Richter's hardware-independent MMU API (basis for MuForce and the virtual-memory memory.library).
Roadshow bsdsocket TCP/IP — Olaf Barthel's TCP/IP stack; SANA-II evolved to R4/R5.

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