mark@arisia.Xerox.COM (Mark Weiser) (01/09/90)
The Portable Common Runtime (aka PCR) is a layer of software intended to be Portable across operating systems and architectures and Common underneath languages. It provides threads, garbage collection, symbol table management (e.g. for debuggers and dynamic loading), and an i/o interface. We believe it is an example of what all operating systems should provide in common for all their applications and languages, but few do. PCR has had its P and C only lightly tested. While early versions have run on 68020 and 29000's, and on Mach, C/Executive (an RTOS), and a few unix flavors, its main testing (99.99%) has been on Sun Sparc machines running SunOS 4.0.X. While we have intercalled C, Cedar, Lisp, Scheme, and Fortran, the primarily languages tested are C and Cedar. However, within the primary test mode, PCR seems to perform well and be robust. It is in daily use by hundreds of folks, including very intense use of multiple threads, dynamic loading, and GC. PCR was described in a paper presented at the recent SOSP '89 conference, where diskette's of source were also given out. You too can get the source (and/or a copy of the paper), by either writing to freige@xerox.com (my secretary) with a snailmail address, or by anonymous ftp to host arisia.xerox.com, directory pub, file pcr.tar.Z. Other than ftp, the source is only available on sparcstation diskettes. The source is copyright Xerox, but permits free reuse (modeled on the X consortium copyright). PCR has been submitted to OSF and Unix International. It is about 20,000 lines of C. -mark Spoken: Mark Weiser ARPA: weiser@xerox.com Phone: +1-415-494-4406