folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) (01/12/90)
I have heard that well-behaved (32-bit clean) MacOS applications will run unmodified under A/UX. My question is, do they appear as UNIX processes? Do they participate in the pre-emptive multitasking of UNIX? Are they prevented from clobbering other tasks? I ask for two reasons: 1) I'd like to be able to run Word, PageMaker, FreeHand, etc., if I ever get A/UX; and 2) if MacOS programs run nicely under A/UX, then it would seem that pre-emptive MultiFinder wouldn't be as hard as some have said. -- Wayne Folta (folta@cs.umd.edu 128.8.128.8)
rmtodd@uokmax.uucp (Richard Michael Todd) (01/13/90)
In article <21776@mimsy.umd.edu> folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) writes: >I have heard that well-behaved (32-bit clean) MacOS applications will run >unmodified under A/UX. My question is, do they appear as UNIX processes? >Do they participate in the pre-emptive multitasking of UNIX? Are they >prevented from clobbering other tasks? 32-bit clean programs should run as long as they don't do any nasty low-level device accesses. Alas, the serial ports and the sound chip count as low-level devices -- neither your terminal program nor SoundEdit will work under A/UX. As for how MacOS programs appear as Unix processes, they appear as instances of the "launch" program. The launch program is an A/UX program which reads in the MacOS program you specify and executes it. (There are tricks with symlinks you can use to make it look like the MacOS program is directly executable, so you can type, e.g. "stuffit" or "mandelzot" at the prompt instead of "launch stuffit" or "launch mandelzot"). They participate in the preemptive multitasking under Unix. As far as I know, there's no way for them to clobber other tasks. >I ask for two reasons: 1) I'd like to be able to run Word, PageMaker, FreeHand, >etc., if I ever get A/UX; and 2) if MacOS programs run nicely under A/UX, then >it would seem that pre-emptive MultiFinder wouldn't be as hard as some have >said. Firstly, from what I've heard most commercial software is not yet 32-bit clean. If you're worried about being able to run a particular piece of software, you might be well advised to check out its A/UX compatibility with the company, or try the program on someone's A/UX-equipped Mac and see for yourself. Most of the freeware and shareware I've tried, on the other hand, runs under A/UX with little trouble. As for your second point, the current version of A/UX only allows one MacOS program to be running at a time. It participates in pre-emptive multitasking with the other Unix processes on the system (so that, e.g. uucp downloads can continue in background without interference), but you can't run a second MacOS program simultaneously. Thus the question of how hard it is to preemptively multitask multiple MacOS programs is still an open question. -- Richard Todd rmtodd@chinet.chi.il.us or rmtodd@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu