Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2000 14:14:30 -0800
From: "Michael D. Crawford" 
To: accu-general@accu.org
Subject: Re: accu-general: C++ Portability

>From "Michael D. Crawford" 
Replies will be sent to the list (Reply-to: header set)

If someone tells you that C++ isn't portable, direct them to the ZooLib
cross-platform application framework

http://zoolib.sourceforge.net

this allows you to write a single set of C++ sources and build native
executable binaries for Mac OS, Windows, BeOS and Posix flavors.  It's
open source under the MIT License (same as XFree86).

It's known to work with Metrowerks (for Mac, Win and BeOS) and gcc (for
BeOS and Posix).  There are compilation problems as the code stands with
Visual C++ but they will be worked out soon.

ZooLib provides platform-independent GUI, threads, mutexes, TCP
networking, and databases among other things.

Probably the main thing you've got to do to keep your C++ portable is to
actually build your code with more than one compiler, and one more than
one "endian" of a processor.   That same admonition goes for writing in
any language. If you write platform-specific stuff at all, you've got to
encapsulate it somehow, and C++ makes this much easier than C does.  The
way this is done in ZooLib is a very nice example.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc.
Expert Software Development and Consulting
http://www.goingware.com/

  Tilting at Windmills for a Better Tomorrow.

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