On Sunday 08 June 2008 03:30:29 am Ivan Krstić wrote: > On Jun 8, 2008, at 12:47 AM, Karl Robillard wrote: > > "I will write portable code, which does not assume any specific > > CPU or > > OS, so as to respect the users right to run my software on many > > different systems." > > CPU, maybe, but writing OS-portable code is another matter entirely. > With low-level code, OS portability does not require the _absence_ of > some action (making assumptions about a specific OS), but a very > strong _presence_ of a dedicated effort to keep up with a pile of > mutually incompatible systems. It's reasonable to hold programmers to > an understanding of endianness and writing 64-bit clean code, yes, but > "not assuming a particular OS" is a pipe dream. Even if you follow > POSIX to the letter, you'll find yourself special-casing behavior > across Solaris, Linux and *BSD, and just about every subsystem on > Windows.
I don't see any real difference. In fact, OS portability is probably the easier part to achieve due to existing standards (TCP/IP, OpenGL, etc) and a plethora of cross-platform libraries. As for low-level code, its not difficult to hide OS differences behind a small interface. In the end, supporting more than one platform is simply a choice to be made - mostly in the form of choosing *not* to use tools which are deliberately designed to *prevent* portability (e.g. Direct3D). On Sunday 08 June 2008 09:28:10 pm Kurt Stephens wrote: > Worked with a programmer who did just such a thing > for an application that he knew he need to port between Solaris, NeXTSTEP > and Windows. It was a lot of work, but it only paid-off after the project > lasted 6 years. Really? This isn't rocket science guys. I work for a small company which ships GUI apps on Linux, Mac OS, Solaris, and Windows. I think I spend more time packaging the software for each platform than getting it to run. You folks may be reading too much into my comment. I don't expect everyone to write software that will magically run everywhere. I would just be happy if people didn't go out of their way to tie software to any specific OS. Of course, much software is written specifically to manage our crappy operating systems, and I couldn't care less if this 'band-aid' software is not portable. I'm talking about the applications which make computer use compelling; those we use to create, display, and share media (documents, music, video, games). These are the applications which should be portable. Oh, and the tools to create those applications, obviously. Achieving this is not a pipe dream and does not take 6 years, though it could be made easier. Hmm... speaking of software which magically runs everywhere, did anyone use the TAO system? Would development of a similar system be a worthy FoNC project? -Karl _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list [email protected] http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
