Re: What's involved in a port?

Article View: comp.sys.next.software

Article #1169

Back to comp.sys.next.software Previous Next

#1169

From: Dave Griffiths
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 20:57

26 lines
1326 bytes

In article <dillon.0ocp@overload.Berkeley.CA.US> dillon@overload.Berkeley.CA.US (Matthew Dillon) writes:
>In article <1992Sep21.061520.6409@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca> aberno@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca (Anthony Berno) writes:
>>
>>This is coming from someone who has never written an operating system.
>>
>>Why is it difficult to port an OS from one machine to another? I
>>understand that some aspects of an operating system must be made hardware
>
>    Four things:
>
>    Device Drivers
>
>    Device Drivers
>
>    Device Drivers
>
>    VM/MMU
>

Note that NeXTStep is especially easy to port because it is based on Mach.
One of the hardest things to port is the Virtual Memory (VM) subsystem
and Mach was designed with a portable VM system - the hardware dependent
stuff was kept to a minimum. Also NeXTStep doesn't have many drivers
compared to a lot of other Unices.

Dave Griffiths

Technical Details

Message-ID: <1992Sep26.205745.1378@prim>

Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!prim!dave

References: <1992Sep21.061520.6409@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca> <dillon.0ocp@overload.Berkeley.CA.US>

Show Full Headers

Complete Article Headers

Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.software
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!mcsun!Germany.EU.net!prim!dave
From: prim!dave@germany.eu.net (Dave Griffiths)
Subject: Re: What's involved in a port?
Message-ID: <1992Sep26.205745.1378@prim>
Organization: Primitive Software Ltd.
References: <1992Sep21.061520.6409@godel.questor.wimsey.bc.ca> <dillon.0ocp@overload.Berkeley.CA.US>
Date: Sat, 26 Sep 1992 20:57:45 GMT
Lines: 26

Reply to Parent Message