[ale] Porting an application to Linux

[Michael H. Warfield]

Tory Michael Deron enscribed thusly:

> Hello everyone,

> I hope this question isn't too general.  I've been asked to find out if there are any gotchas when moving an application from SCO to Linux.  

> If you have a large business application, for example, that is run in various versions of SCO 5, would running it on a Linux machine be a matter of recompiling the source and going to work, or are there other considerations of which I need to be aware?  Would programming changes be necessary?

> I know this may be a potentially involved issue, but any general comments would be great for getting me moving in the right direction.

	For most applications, you will find it relatively easy.  Especially
if the application compiles on other versions of Unix.  SCO does have some
distinct peculiarities, however, that can complicate matters.

	If your application uses or takes advantage of streams or streams
drivers, you may have some problems.  There is an application layer streams
package that helps out where streams are required, but streams are not part
of the stock Linux kernel.

	The authentication system on SCO is very different as well.  If
your application is using any of the SecureWare / C2 authentication library
functions, you may have to rewrite that part (you would probably want to
"pamify" your application to work with Pluggable Authentication Modules).

	Outside of those two gotcha's, you may have some minor header
cleanup to do, but that SHOULD be about it.

	You might also try running your application under the IBCS2 emulator,
prior to actually porting, and see if any surprises surface.

> Thanks,

> Tory

	Mike
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