File portability techniques

Details File portability techniques File portability techniques

2000-04-24

2003-02-25

Dam, Tuan Q. (Department: 2124)

Data processing: software development, installation, and managem

Software program development tool

Translation of code

C717S140000, C717S147000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06526570

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of Invention
The invention relates generally to computer systems. More particularly, methods and apparatus for porting software between different computing platforms are disclosed.
2. Description of Relevant Art
The continuing proliferation of software platforms and hardware architectures ensures that both computer users and computer program developers will encounter many different computing environments in the course of their careers. It should be noted that in the context of this discussion, the term environment refers to the complete range of elements in a computing system that interact with the ported software. These elements typically include a processor and operating system as well as I/O devices, libraries, networks, or, in some cases, a larger human or physical system. Even though a few quasi-standard platforms (e.g. IBM-PC, UNIX) have become widely used there, as yet, is no universal computing environment. In order to maintain and expand their viability, therefore, most software programs will eventually face the need to be ported, such that an executable version of the software program based on the existing version is created in the new computing environment. Portability, or the ability of a software program to be ported to a given environment (i.e., the target) is, therefore, becoming universally recognized as a desirable attribute for most software programs. It is clear, therefore, that portability between different computing platforms enhances the value of a software program both by extending its useful lifecycle and by expanding the range of installations in which it can be readily used. As is well known in the art, a software program can include an application program, a system program, or a component of a program whereas a software system is a collection of software programs.
Porting of a software program is useful to the degree that the cost of porting is less than the cost of rewriting the program in the new target environment. A software program would be perfectly portable if it could be ported at zero cost and, of course, this is never possible in practice. In practice there are two basic portability protocols, the first being binary portability (i.e., porting the executable form of the software program) and the second being source portability (i.e., porting the source language representation of the software program). Although binary portability protocols typically offer several advantages (related primarily to ease of porting) it can only be used to port software programs across strongly similar environments thereby severely limiting its usefulness. In contrast, since source portability protocols assume availability of a source code, they typically provide a greater ability to adapt a particular software program to a wider range of computing environments.
The porting process in general has two principal components referred to as transportation and adaptation. In the context of the porting process, the transportation component is defined primarily as the physical movement of the software program between the various different computing platforms. Although this may seem to be a trivial task, in many cases it is not trivial since compatible media must be used and various types of representation conversions may also be required. On the other hand, the adaptation component is any modification that must be performed on the original version that includes both mechanical translation such as by language processors, and manual modification by humans both of which incur costs in terms of capital equipment and man hours in the form of increased development costs.
In addition to the increase in development costs, there remains the possibility of a reduction in some quality measures of the actual software such as performance, or conformance to system-specific user-interface conventions. However, the corresponding benefits typically take the form of reduced costs to produce and maintain future implementations of the particular software program, as well as possible quality improvements in factors such as reliability.
Unfortunately, most of the porting process is still done by ad hoc methods that result in inefficient techniques that add substantially to the costs of porting software from one platform to another. By way of example, a compiler translates a computer program from one language into another, catching any errors in syntax along the way. Most commonly, a compiler translates some high level language, such as C++ or COBOL, into optimized machine language such that a computer can understand without any translation. In order to fully port a compiler, therefore, several tasks must be accomplished in order for the ported compiler to be able to successfully, and in a highly reliable manner, perform its designed functions while operating in a totally different platform than the one in which it was originally conceived.
The several tasks required to be accomplished in order to fully port a compiler include customization of instruction selection, register allocation, instruction scheduling, instruction peephole optimization, calling conventions, frame layout, runtime issues, instruction encoding, and “clues” for optimization for the different platform. Current compiler porting techniques have only been able to efficiently perform the first four tasks leaving the remaining five tasks for humans to accomplish manually. Typically, in order to accomplish the remaining five tasks requires that anywhere from approximately 30,000 lines of code to as much as 100,000 lines of code must be written by hand which can take up to a full man year to accomplish. This is obviously very inefficient, not cost effective, and leaves the entire porting process prone to error, both human and otherwise.
Therefore, what is desired is the capability of porting software programs, including compilers, from one platform to another different platform in a cost effective and resource efficient manner.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Broadly speaking, the invention relates to an improved method, apparatus and computer system for efficiently porting a software program, including in one implementation a compiler, from one computing platform to another different computing platform. The invention can be implemented in numerous ways, including as a method, a computer system, an apparatus, and a computer readable medium. Several embodiments of the invention are discussed below.
According to one aspect of the present invention, an apparatus for compiling a platform specific compiler is described. The apparatus includes a set of user defined platform dependent compiler architecture descriptors that describe corresponding architectural features of a particular hardware platform. An architecture descriptor compiler converts the user defined platform dependent compiler architecture descriptors into the platform dependent compiler source code which is converted into platform dependent object code by a host compiler. During run-time for the platform specific compiler, an interface mediates the flow of information between platform dependent compiler object code and platform independent compiler object code.
As a method for building a platform specific compiler, a set of user defined platform dependent compiler architecture descriptors that describe corresponding architectural features of a particular hardware platform dependent compiler are provided. The descriptors are converted into platform dependent compiler source code by an architecture descriptor compiler. The platform dependent compiler source code is compiled into platform dependent object code. The platform specific compiler is formed form the platform dependent object code and platform independent compiler object code already provided.
In another embodiment, a platform specific compiler is disclosed. The compiler includes platform dependent compiler object code and platform independent compiler object code which are suitable for execution on a particular hardware platform. An interface that is partially embedded in the

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