DOC HOME SITE MAP MAN PAGES GNU INFO SEARCH PRINT BOOK
 
UnixWare standards conformance

UnixWare standards conformance

This topic is part of Porting, integration, and compatibility.

UnixWare will conform to (as well as drive) many industry standard interface specifications. These include graphical interfaces, commands and utilities, languages, and networking protocols.

Why conform to a standard?

There are many benefits to using a development system that conforms to industry standards; more benefits are realized when the target environment for your application is a system that also conforms to industry standards.

The standards to which UnixWare 7 conforms can be classed as binary and source:


Binary standards
Aim to permit compiled code to be run on any implementation of a particular family of processor (such as the Intel486(TM) family). If the system on which you develop your source code complies with the binary standards for that system's processor, then you will need to compile your source code only once and it will run on any implementation of the processor family that also conforms to the standard, regardless of manufacturer.

Source standards
Enhance compatibility of source code across all implementations of the UNIX system, the aim being that any program written to these standards need only be recompiled (with no source code changes) using a compliant development system on the target system to run on that system.

Binary standards can be seen as a super-set of the source standards for a particular processor architecture.

For example, the X/Open Portability Guide has both a binary and source standard. If you conform to the binary standard, then you automatically comply with the XPG source standard. Your code will not only run without compilation on any binary-compliant implementation of the processor family on which it was developed, it will also run with only a recompile on any system that complies with the source standard.

Binary standards conformance

UnixWare's powerful application run-time environment is designed to conform to the following industry binary standards; any binary executable that conforms to these standards is intended to run without modification on UnixWare:


UNIX®95
X/Open UNIX 95 Brand (Single UNIX Specification)

XPG4
X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 4 Version 2 Base Profile Brand

ABI
System V Application Binary Interface Specification, 3rd. Ed.

iABI
System V ABI Intel Processor Supplement, 3rd. Ed.

iABI+
ABI+ for Intel Architectures Specification 3.0

iBCS2
Intel Binary Compatibility Specification, Version 2

COFF
Common Object File Format

ELF
Executable and Linking Format

SCO DDI
Device Driver Interface Version 5 or greater

ICCCM
The X Consortium's Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual

sendmail
Industry-standard mail and messaging protocol

See the section ``UNIX95 conformance'' for a complete description of how UnixWare 7 conforms to the UNIX95 standard.

See the section ``ABI conformance'' for more on the benefits of conforming to binary standards.

Source standards conformance

The UnixWare 7 UnixWare and OpenServer Development Kit (UDK) -- the compilers, system headers, libraries, and development environment -- is designed to comply with the following source standards:


POSIX
Portable Operating System for UNIX (POSIX.1, POSIX.2 and POSIX.4); ISO 9945-1:1990; IEEE Std 1003.1-1990

UNIX®95
X/Open UNIX 95 Brand (Single UNIX Specification)

XPG4
X/Open Portability Guide, Issue 4 Version 2 Base Profile Brand

SVID3
System V Interface Definition, Issue 3

FIPS
Federal Information Processing Standard 151-2 (IEEE Std 1003.1-1990 with all extensions)

ISO/IEC 9899:1990
C Language Standard (plus ISO MSE amendment -- EN 29899)

Next topic: UNIX95 conformance

© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
UnixWare 7 Release 7.1.4 - 22 April 2004