Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sun, 30 Jun 1996 17:57:54 -0700 | From | Rakesh Dubey <> | Subject | Re: Driver optimization. |
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(Assuming NT does something like this.) The easiet way to accomplish this is to have a smart installer. The software package shipped by the vendor can have separate* binaries for various platforms. An installer program can install only the needed one to your hard disk from CD.
A somewhat more sophisticates approach is used in NextStep where you have a fat binary for several architectures. The program loader knows the current architecture and runs appropriate code. This is non-trivial since all development tools have to be fat aware. The resulting fat binary does not bloat the code too much since most application programs have a big data sections. It is also nice for administrations, software vendors etc.
-rakesh
On Sun, 30 Jun 1996, Rogier Wolff wrote:
> I was reading some NT sources (No, please don't shoot me :-), and > found something that Linux should've had for quite a while now.
On a similar note, I was speaking to a friend who is fairly familiar with NT. He states that you can install NT 3.5/4.0 on computer A, a 586, and also on computer B, a DEC alpha, and also computer C, a PowerPC RS/6000.
Then you can go to a store and buy Word or Office for NT, and install the same software on computer A and on computer B and on computer C.
Now I must admit this sounded really unlikely; after all, what kind of binary format could be implemented to generate code that is acceptable to a DEC Alpha, a Pentium, and a PowerPC?
My friend attributed this to a "Hardware Abstraction Layer", which I simply read as being a microkernel based approach to solving processor and platform differences, and what came to mind was mklinux running on a PowerMac....
Yet, when I got an mklinux box up, and transfered an x86 binary to it, and tried to run it, no go!
% file foobar foobar: ELF 32-bit LSB executable i386 (386 and up) Version 1
What is it that NT has supposedly implemented?
What does it take to do "binary compatibility" across platforms? (i.e. what does it take to run the *same* binary on x86, 68k, alpha, ppc?
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