brinkema@fjcnet.GOV (John R. Brinkema) (09/22/89)
I am writing a paper about the problems of converting (porting) software between various versions of UNIX, in particular *standard UNIX* System V, BSD 4.x, and Xenix. I have done many ports in many 'directions' but am very interested in others' experience. In particular, do you have a standard procedure; a set of feature-areas that you always check; tricks that make the porting easier? Also what are the hardest feature to port; what features are so subtle that bugs from them hide? I will sumarize. tia. jb.
klee@gilroy.pa.dec.com (Ken Lee) (09/23/89)
> I am writing a paper about the problems of converting (porting) software > between various versions of UNIX, in particular *standard UNIX* System V, > BSD 4.x, and Xenix. I have done many ports in many 'directions' but am > very interested in others' experience. Rochkind's excellent book *Advanced UNIX Programming* (Prentice-Hall) discusses porting between various breeds of UNIX. I assume that other good UNIX programming books do the same. The biggest problems are usually inter-process communication and device drivers, which are 90% incompatible among most UNIXs. Signals also bite many people. Other differences, like directory searching, file descriptor management, and utility library differences (e.g., string library) are relatively easy to port. Ken Lee DEC Western Software Laboratory, Palo Alto, Calif. Internet: klee@decwrl.dec.com uucp: uunet!decwrl!klee