Porting legacy app(was Re: [virtmach] Your VM)

[korek@icm.edu.pl]

On Fri, 25 May 2001 Steve_Lipscombe@amat.com wrote:

> 2) Translate the Tektronix Pascal source into Delphi/Kylix source (not trivial)
> and write an interface to convert the MTOS system calls to work under Linux.
(...)
> So... which makes more sense. Or is there a better way?

If there is really a LOT of Pascal code, and you have precise Tektronix P.
spec, then I would consider writing (half-)automatic translator between
dialects. Once I had a luck to translate most of differences between two
pretty expensive parallelizing compilers on incompatible platforms with
just 10-liner Perl script. This way humans had 10x less work... (Of course
in certain simple cases library wrappers are enough, but not necessarily
as elegant when you are going to develop your ported code further).

Another(highly unlikely, but potential saves easily justify few hours
of web-search) option is to find soft with similar capabilities
running on the latest equipment and look if it is easier to adapt it to
your needs, than to rewrite own soft.

	Greetings :-)
		Michal Gajda
		korek@icm.edu.pl
		*knowledge-hungry student experimentalist*