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In a message dated: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 13:54:35 EDT
michael bovee said:
>After checking out the Fink project at sourceforge.net I decided to asked my
>friend who wrote UltraScan for linux whether it might soon be possible to run
>his software 'directly' under OSX. (He is planning to make a commercial
>version for MacOSX users) He replied:
>
>I don't think it is quite as easy as this - first, a linux version
>compiled for an Intel box will most certainly not run on a Mac, even though
>it is Unix, because of the byte ordering differences between Mac Motorola
>chips and Intel Pentium chips. Even if you compile Linux on Mac, the resulting
>binary *may* not be compatible with the *BSD style format used by OSX.
>So what you would need is a BSD distro for Mac (I don't know of one) and
>then you have a shot. I heard that Linux binaries will run under BSD, but
>have never tried that out.
>
>Any comments? Anyone know of a BSD distribution of linux for OSX?
Ahm, I think there's been some confusion in translation here. There
is no such thing as a BSD distribution of Linux, and there is no such
thing as Linux for OSX.
In order for UltraScan to run under Linux or OSX or BSD all you need
is:
a. the source for UltraScan
b. a decent compiler (gcc ought to do)
c. a UNIX based OS.
So, if UltraScan is compilable under Linux, it should be easily
compilable under any of the BSDs and under OSX. That doesn't mean to
say you won't have problems compiling it under various platforms, but
that the porting of the application itself should be pretty
straightforward. If the application was written in such a way as to
tie the application to a specific CPU, then you have a few more
hurdles involved in porting it between an Intel chipset and something
else.
If the application in question was portably written in the first
place, the compiler should be able to take care of any necessary
'endian' swapping, since that's all done at a much lower level than
the C code.
It sounds like what your friend was speaking of was just taking the
actual Linux binary and attempting to run that directly under OSX.
That won't work since the app wasn't compiled for that OS or that
hardware architecture. But if you can convince him to recompile for
OSX and/or the BSDs, you should be all set.
Hope that helps!
- --
Seeya,
Paul
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