From: mrothste@keiko.acs.calpoly.edu (Rothstein)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc
Subject: Re: On SW for NRW
Date: 16 Oct 92 21:01:54 GMT
Reply-To: mrothste@data.acs.calpoly.edu
Organization: Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo

In article <1992Oct14.071813.6148@pages.com> bwebster@pages.com (Bruce F.  
Webster) writes:
> In article <1992Oct8.180935.17530@athena.mit.edu> jgshir@athena.mit.edu  
(John G  
> Shirlaw) writes:
> > 
> > 
> > Given that NeXT clames that I forget who but one of the major vendor  
managed  
> to
> > port there software to NS486 in less than a day.  I would guess/hope  
that the
> > same porting situation will occure with the NRW.  Thus unless the  
companies
> > making the software using porgramming languidges other than C and IB  
> shouldn't be
> > a problem on porting.
> > 
> 
> It took Peter Linss (one of our engineers) a day and a fraction to get  
the  
> current Pages build up and running under NS-486.  The day was because we  
were  
> still developing under NS 3.0 PR2, and NeXT cleverly made some changes  
(between  
> PR2 and 3.0 gold!) as to how ProjectBuilder project trees and makefiles  
have to  
> be set up. It took a while to track down just what the problem was, then  
to  
> change over our entire project tree (which has some 20-odd subprojects  
in it).  
> The fraction was to track down the only incompatibility (3DKit wasn't  
yet  
> ported over to NS-486), put conditional comments around the code using  
3DKit  
> methods, and recompile. Voila!
> 
> Having figured all that out, it take about about two hours to port any  
current  
> build over to NS-486, which is how long it takes to recompile our NS-68k  
source  
> code from scratch. It Just Works(tm).
> 
> In article <1992Oct11.064357.4792@serveme.chi.il.us>  
datec@gagme.chi.il.us  
> (Charles Robinson) writes:
> > 
> > Fat binaries (like those planned for NextStep 486) should solve your  
concern.
> > Basically the (incompatable) binaries are packaged together and  
NextStep
> > figures out which one to load. Developers will, as I understand the  
current
> > situation, be forced to compile on each native system (no cross  
compilers
> > will be available for the 486).
> > 
> 
> I'd be real surprised if that were true, since the Gnu compiler can emit  
code  
> for just about every processor known to man. (OK, I exaggerate, but not  
by  
> much.) In fact, rumor has it that there are NeXTSTEP development teams  
in the  
> world today who use non-NeXT, non-68k, high-end workstations as  
"compiler  
> servers" for building NeXTSTEP-68k software. (No, it's not us--though I  
wish it  
> were, given the current build time for our software.) If that limitation  
(no  
> cross compilers) *does* turn out to be the case, it's a marketing  
decision, not  
> a technical one. ..bruce..
> 
> Bruce F. Webster
> CTO, Pages Software Inc.
> bwebster@pages.com
> #import <pages/disclaimer.h>

As I understood Bob Lawton (Head of NeXTSTEP 486) when he spoke at BaNG,  
at first release there will not be cross compilers but there will be fat  
binaries.  Cross compilers will come later.  It seemed like it was just to  
many things to do in to little time (they are really working hard on  
drivers).

-Mont
	NeXTmail OK :)
	President CP-NUG (Cal Poly NeXT User Group)
	mrothste@data.acs.calpoly.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.misc