Port Your UNIX® Applications to Linux®–Quickly, Efficiently, and Reliably

Increasingly, developers, architects, and project managers face the challenge of porting their C, C++, and Java applications from UNIX® to Linux® environments. Now, there’s a definitive, start-to-finish guide to porting applications from today’s most widely used UNIX platforms: Solaris™, HP-UX, and AIX®.

Three of IBM’s most-experienced Linux porting specialists lead you through your entire project: scoping, analysis, recoding, and testing. They present a start-to-finish porting methodology, realistic discussions of key porting tasks, and a questionnaire for assessing the work involved in any new project. You’ll discover what Linux offers in terms of APIs, library functions, versioning, system features, and tools–and the implications for your project. Next, the authors address each individual UNIX® platform in detail, identifying specific porting challenges and best-practice solutions. Coverage includes

·        Understanding the Linux environment: GNU binutils, Java environments, shells, packaging options, and more

·        Uncovering and addressing project unknowns, variables, and other risks

·        Handling specific platform differences: standards, compilers, linkers, versioning, system/library calls, threads, and more

·        Testing and debugging ported applications using the GNU debugger and Linux memory leak and performance tracing tools

·        Contains quick references to UNIX^® and Linux APIs, compilers, and linker options, and a discussion of porting issues unique to IBM’s POWER^™ architecture

Whether you need a start-to-finish guide or a concise reference, you’ll find this book an indispensable resource for all your UNIX®-to-Linux porting projects.

 

Customer Reviews & Comments
The cover announces that this is a "Comprehensive Reference". It certainly is, starting with a treatment of Linux development that almost could be a book by itself and ending with testing and development tools and techniques; it covers it all. In between are specifics of porting from Solaris, HP-UX and AIX, in great detail with plenty of advice and examples. The only thing I'd question is the inclusion of so much unnecessary information. Is it necessary to have tables that show that "-o filename" is identical for both Linux and Solaris compilers (and of course two other tables show the same for HP-UX and AIX)? There is too much of that here; we could have saved a few small trees by leaving that out. I suppose there are arguments to be made for including everything, but I'd ather concentrate on the differences. I can't fault the ators there: they give extensive coverage to the differences, and it's much more than just superficial listings of flags or call arguments with differences (though again there's plenty of that too). Overall, if I were porting from one of those OSes, I'd definitely want this book on my desk.