amiga-news.de - AROS: Considerations on MorphOS-compatibility

31.Mar.2012 AROS: Considerations on MorphOS-compatibility
The developer Jason McMullan who helped to make AROS compatible to the 68k-architecture and to create an AROS-Kickstart-ROMs, is looking for new challenge.

On the developer mailinglist (full quotes below) he asked for the interest in the executability of MorphOS applications under AROS/PPC. For that there also is a bounty project but this was started in 2005. To this time Apple was about to bring computers with Intel processors onto the market. Besides, some money of the donations was used for different AROS bounties.

Jason explained that the API of AmigaOS 4 is very different from AROS and MorphOS, but many AROS-libraries already include stubs for MorphOS-functions beyond the 3.x-API. Additionally source codes has been already shared with MorphOS.

Against this background, he would like AROS to be seen as a kind of transitional solution for MorphOS developers for the source code level. The developers could check their precompiled PowerPC-programms if AROS made available all features which they require. Then they could compile their programms for AROS/x86 as well having the certainty that they only have to fix some possible Endianess-problems.

In his opinion this could result in the option for MorphOS to use AROS as base for a MorphOS/x86 with PowerPC-compatibility with the help of a Rosetta-kind of PPC-to-x86-interface.

Staf Verhaegen complemented that it also could be possible to add the ppcmos und ppcos4 architectures to the AROS/PPC-architecture to be able to offer cpmpatible versions for both operating systems and finally to unite all Amiga systems in a single and open source operating system.

Quotes from the mailing list

Jason McMullan: "OS4's API (interfaces, etc) is very different, structurally, from AROS/MorphOS 4. Many of our libraries already have the MorphOS function stubs for post 3.x APIs. And we already share code with MorphOS.

I would like to see AROS as a 'source level' transition for MorphOS developers, allowing them to run their pre-compiled PPC binaries on AROS PPC (to ensure that AROS supports the services their Application uses), then they can recompile for x86, knowing that they should only need to fix the inevitable endianess issues.

Who knows - maybe MorphOS could contribute a 'Rosetta' style PPC->x86 interface, then they could use AROS x86 as a kernel for a 'MorphOS x86' (with PPC compatability)."

Staf Verhaegen: "To summarize ppc arch would use native packing for all structs and a pointer table for the LVOs without special stub code. ppcmos would apply special packing to structs that need it and provide the MOS LVO table convention for shared libraries.

In the end I would like to have then also a ppcos4 arch that would then be targeted to be OS4 compatible with their interfaces for shared libraries etc. One open source OS to unite them all!" (snx) (Translation: dr)

[News message: 31. Mar. 2012, 09:32] [Comments: 0]
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