Porting i386 Apps To StrongARM?

OneWindCat asks: "I wonder how tough it will be to port i386-targeted apps to StrongARM. I have Linux server from Rebel.com and it has StrongARM processor (low-power consuption, ~12 Wt in running mode) based architecture. I wanted to know if anyone has gone through the pain of compiling source code for such a machine and what the outcome was. Or better yet, is there an i386 emulator written for StrongARM? Performance is not an issue, since I plan to use i386 machine as an Xterminal."

Yep ;-)

[mirko]

I have an Acorn RiscPC at home.
I used to install RiscBSD (an ARM-aimed netBSD port) ont it.
It rocked.
Concerning the apps, I used old source CDs most of which usually compiled fine : mSQL, xChomp, etc.
So, I think you can go, try to compile, eventually adapt some statements and you'll be successfull more than often.
Good luck.

eh?

[nester]

any properly written code will compile on any arch.

Dude.....

[FigWig]

I heard there are these new fangled thing called 'ANSI C' and POSIX. You might want to look into them.

Re:eh?

[bluGill]

In the real world we have to deal with thousands of lines of impropperly written code, devices (which may have a different endian), hardware memory locations that have meaning but are different.

Sure, once you have netBSD ported (or linux, for that matter windows if you have the money and time) Then any properly written porgram shoudl port easially.

Still, in the real world not everything is written in C. Sometimes programs are written in self modifing x86 machine language. When fast processors were blazing along at 8Mhz, you needed to wring all the speed you could. today you can sacrifice a little speed for easy to understand portable code, not then.

In answer to the orginial question, BOCHs is probably your best bet. SHould be portable, and emulates x86. Never has been perect, but often good enough.

Depends mostly on the OS

[Mike Miller]

If you are trying to get Windows apps ported, then you are looking at a lot of work since the hard part (the program->OS interface) would need to be reworked.

If you are looking at porting GNU/Linux/Unix apps, then it is generally pretty easy. The older, and better written apps tend to port more cleanly, along with anything that uses `configure` to resolve system dependancies. I used to work on a University suport team and we would have to compile the same application for HP/UX, Linux, SunOS, Solaris and NeXTStep. Most stuff went cleanly, or with a few tweaks to take care of libs.

It can't be too hard, since there are a couple of linux-based ARM machines out there already. Most closely related to your interests is the netwinder. Be sure to check out http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/ [linux.org.uk]

- Mike

Check out netwinder.org

[K-Man]

There are several newsgroups for netwinder dev issues.

I was on the mailing lists that preceded these, and the main issue I can recall was struct alignments. A lot of code expects things like

struct { char a; char b; char c; char d }

to fit into four bytes, when 4-byte alignment may push it to 16.