Feature-Based Portability
Glenn S. Fowler (gsf@research.att.com)
David G. Korn (dgk@research.att.com)
John J. Snyder (jjs@research.att.com)
Kiem-Phong Vo (kpv@research.att.com)
AT&T Bell Laboratories
600 Mountain Avenue
Murray Hill, NJ 07974 USA
Abstract
Current computing platforms encompass a dizzying variety of hardware
and software. A software application may live or die based on how
portable it is. Much has been written and talked about how to enhance
portability. But few tools are available to support writing portable
code and, more importantly, to encode porting knowledge. This paper
describes IFFE, a tool and an accompanying programming style that
supports software portability. IFFE has enabled the porting and
construction of many large software applications on heterogeneous
platforms with virtually no user intervention.
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