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In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed (e.g. different CPU, operating system, or third party library). The term is also used in a general way to refer to the changing of software/hardware to make them usable in different environments. Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...
A computer program is a collection of instructions that describe a task, or set of tasks, to be carried out by a computer. ...
CPU can stand for: in computing: Central processing unit in journalism: Commonwealth Press Union in law enforcement: Crime prevention unit in software: Critical patch update, a type of software patch distributed by Oracle Corporation in Macleans College is often known as Ash Lim. ...
An operating system (OS) is a computer program that manages the hardware and software resources of a computer. ...
Illustration of an application which may use libvorbisfile. ...
The term is not generally applied to the process of adapting software to run with less memory on the same CPU and operating system, nor is it applied to the rewriting of source code in a different language (i.e. language conversion or translation). Software developers often claim that the software they write is portable, meaning that little effort is needed to adapt it to a new environment. The amount of effort actually needed depends on several factors, including the extent to which the original environment (the source platform) differs from the new environment (the target platform), the experience of the original authors in knowing which programming language constructs and third party library calls are unlikely to be portable, and the amount of effort invested by the original authors in only using portable constructs (platform specific constructs often provide a cheaper solution). A programming language is an artificial language that can be used to control the behavior of a machine, particularly a computer. ...
The number of significantly different CPUs and operating systems commonly used today is much smaller than in the past. The dominance of the x86 architecture means that most desktop software is never ported to a different CPU. In that same market, the choice of operating systems has effectively been reduced to three: Microsoft Windows, with about 90% market share; Mac OS; and Unix/Linux). In the embedded systems market, portability remains a significant issue. x86 or 80x86 is the generic name of a microprocessor architecture first developed and manufactured by Intel. ...
An instruction set, or instruction set architecture (ISA), describes the aspects of a computer architecture visible to a programmer, including the native datatypes, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O (if any). ...
Microsoft Windows is the name of several families of proprietary software operating systems by Microsoft. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Filiation of Unix and Unix-like systems Unix (officially trademarked as UNIXâ¢) is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ...
Linux refers to any Unix-like computer operating system which uses the Linux kernel. ...
What is an Embedded System? Electronic devices that incorporate a computer(usually a microprocessor) within their implementation. ...
International standards, such as those promulgated by the ISO, greatly facilitate porting by specifying details of the computing environment in a way that minimizes variances among different platforms. Often, porting software between two platforms that implement the same standard (such as POSIX.1) is simply a matter of recompiling the program on the new platform. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from national standards bodies. ...
In computing, a platform describes some sort of framework, either in hardware or software, which allows software to run. ...
POSIX or Portable Operating System Interface for uniX is the collective name of a family of related standards specified by the IEEE to define the application programming interface (API) for software compatible with variants of the Unix operating system. ...
A compiler is a computer program that translates a computer program written in one computer language (called the source language) into an equivalent program written in another computer language (called the output or the target language). ...
There also exist an ever-increasing number of tools to facilitate porting, such as the GNU Compiler Collection (which provides consistent programming languages on different platforms) and autoconf (which automates the detection of minor variations in the environment and adapts the software accordingly before compilation). The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ...
processing Autoconf is a tool for producing shell scripts that automatically configure software source code packages to adapt to many kinds of UNIX-like systems. ...
The compilers for some high-level programming languages (e.g. Eiffel, Esterel) gain portability by outputting source code in a high level intermediate language (such as C) for which compilers are more generally available. Eiffel is an object-oriented programming language which emphasizes the production of robust software. ...
Esterel is a formally defined synchronous imperative language for the programming of reactive systems. ...
In computer science, an intermediate language is the language of an abstract machine designed to aid in the analysis of computer programs. ...
C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ...
Two activities related to (but distinct from) porting are emulating and cross-compiling. This article is about emulation in computer science. ...
Compiling a program takes place by running the compiler on the build platform. ...
Porting in gaming
Porting is also the term used when a computer game designed to run on one platform, be it a personal computer or a video game console, is converted to run on a different platform. Earlier video game "ports" were often not true ports, but rather complete rewrites. However, more and more video games are now being developed using software that can output code for PCs as well as for one or more consoles. Many early ports suffered significant gameplay quality issues because the hardware of PCs and consoles differed so dramatically. A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Console wars. ...
It has been suggested that Multiplayer game be merged into this article or section. ...
See also A console emulator is a program that allows a computer to emulate a video game console. ...
Within systems engineering, -ilities are aspects or non-functional requirements. ...
A source port is a source code modification to a computer games engine that allows it to be played on operating systems for which it was not originally created or compatible with. ...
Write once, compile anywhere (WOCA) means writing software that compiles and is thus useable on all platforms. ...
External links - Open Systems Portability Checker
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