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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.


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