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Diffstat (limited to 'doc/PORTABILITY')
| -rw-r--r-- | doc/PORTABILITY | 34 |
1 files changed, 34 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/PORTABILITY b/doc/PORTABILITY new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c694a22 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/PORTABILITY @@ -0,0 +1,34 @@ +You may have heard from a certain person that cdrkit is not portable and you +may need some help to decide whether you shall believe him/her or not. It is, +as usual, recommended to make your own opinion before adopting someone elses +which may be biased. + +What is portability? Portability is the ability for being compiled and +deployed on a platform that an application supports. It is obvious that nobody +can promise the unlimited portability especially not to operating systems to do +not exist yet or that are long dead (dead like in: unsupported, unmaintained for +many years, needing hardware which is not available in stores for many years). +And there could always undocumented bugs which means that real life tests +should be done on the target platform(s) again and again. + +Therefore, unlimited portability is pure utopia. It is required to define a +certain degree of portability to meet the needs of the target user base. + +How does that work in scope of cdrkit? Main target are mainstream platforms. +Currently, it supports Linux, FreeBSD, Cygwin (Win32), SunOS and AIX5l. This +set should cover the majority of general purpose computer systems in the wild. + +Cdrkit sets some requirements on the targeted operating systems. However, most +modern unix-like OS should be able to fullfill them. Those requirements +include: + + - an ANSI-C compiler, or a GCC port + - GNU make port + - Large File Support + - sane libc library + - some prerequisites to bootstrap CMake + +This cuts off support for really old operating systems, but... do you care? Do +you need it? Or do you want to believe the tales of superiority through (just +claimed) portability? + |