Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ptsfa!lll-tis!mordor!sri-spam!sri-unix!garth!walter
From: walter@garth.UUCP (Walter Bays)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: ABIs and the futurrrr of UNIX(tm)
Message-ID: <587@garth.UUCP>
Date: 31 Mar 88 07:15:28 GMT
References: <431@micropen> <185@tscs.UUCP>
Reply-To: walter@garth.UUCP (Walter Bays)
Organization: INTERGRAPH (APD) -- Palo Alto, CA
Lines: 38
Posted: Wed Mar 30 23:15:28 1988

In article <185@tscs.UUCP> gerard@tscs.UUCP (Stephen M. Gerard) writes:
>A pseudo assembler interface could take advanatge of optimized library 
>routines for each processor type and yield satisfactory results for most 
>applications.  This type of standard would not discriminate against the less 
>popular cpu's and could offer across the board compatability for UNIX systems 
>ranging from desktop PC's to Cray's.  This would still give the software 
>developer reasonable protection because without documentation and meaningful 
>variable names, the ability to edit such code would be limited to about the 
>same level as code generated by a good quality disassembler.  The plus side 
>for the software developer, is that they now have a much larger market to sell 
>to.  ... [discussion of advantages to end-users and hardware vendors]

The idea sounds very good.  But perhaps you can explain why it's so
hard for a developer to provide multiple versions.  (This is not a
knock at developers; I simply don't know the answer.) If we believe in
source code standardization, all you have to do is recompile.  (Right?
:-) Is the problem access to the various machines to do the port?
Continued access for customer support?  Incompatibilities:  C-C,
SysV-SysV, BSD-BSD, SysV-BSD, X.Windows-X.Windows, X.Windows-NeWS?  Or
is the problem really distribution:  that you would have to produce
versions for M machines times N media formats, and your distributors
would have to stock that times S software houses?

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Phone: (415) 852-2384
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