jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) (04/12/90)
I have a questions that falls in many categories, so forgive the
multiple posting. I have heard that version 4.0 of unix is supposed to
be binary compatible within processor families. My questions are these:
1) What kind of limitations do you run into within processor families?
2) I heard rumors that people were working on making unix completely
binary compatible between all platforms. Is this true, and if so,
how is this possible? How will it be implemented? How can such
a scheme be implemented over such a wide range of architectures?
It seems that such a project would be impossible to accomplish.
3) What does the future hold in the way of binary compatibility for unix?
I think this would be an important step and I'm curious as to how far
it will be taken.
Thanx in advance.
--
Jesse W. Asher - Dynasys - (901)382-1705 Evening: (901)382-1609
6196-1 Macon Rd., Suite 200, Memphis, TN 38134
UUCP: {fedeva,chromc,autoz}!dynasys!jesseasjc@key.COM (Steve Correll) (04/14/90)
In article <140@dynasys.UUCP>, jessea@dynasys.UUCP (Jesse W. Asher) writes: > I have heard that version 4.0 of unix is supposed to > be binary compatible within processor families... > 1) What kind of limitations do you run into within processor families? For example, in the absence of standardization different implementations of C on the same processor may disagree on whether "int" is 16 or 32 bits wide, or on the method of passing arguments to a subroutine. > 2) I heard rumors that people were working on making unix completely > binary compatible between all platforms. Is this true, and if so, > how is this possible? One suggestion is to ship software in the form of a standard compiler intermediate language, with an installation script that runs the back end of the compiler to turn in into an executable object. One obstacle to this is the lack of a generally accepted standard for a precisely defined compiler intermediate language; the proliferation of dialects of Pcode and Ucode alone suggests one shouldn't underestimate this obstacle. -- ...{sun,pyramid}!pacbell!key!sjc Steve Correll