SPP - Low Tech, Practical, UNIX Software Portability
John Sellens
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 3G1 Canada
jmsellens@uwaterloo.ca
Abstract
The great number of UNIX variants and the huge amount of good, freely
available software makes simple software portability a very worthwhile
and useful goal. Portability has traditionally been obtained with
software package specific solutions, configuration scripts, #ifdef's
and so on. This paper describes SPP, a small collection of include
files, library routines and utilities that can be installed once and
utilized by many, different software packages. SPP does not require
that a software author change his or her programming style or
techniques, and frees the author from worrying about the variations
among machines, allowing him or her to concentrate on the program
instead of the operating system.
Download the full text of this paper, in
ASCII (34,043 bytes) or
POSTSCRIPT (58,210 bytes) form.
To Become a USENIX Member, please see our
Membership Information.