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by pjmlp 3599 days ago
People keep forgetting that the standard UNIX interfaces are only good for CLI, server and daemon applications.

Anything else isn't easier just because a system is UNIX.

The same porting issues would arise when porting to anything else that isn't GNU/Linux.

1 comments

Well, porting to Windows is actually easy thanks to mingw32 and MXE. At least easier than macOS. It's also far easier to get Octave on the BSDs. So frustrating that macOS is the most difficult target.
I had lots of fun porting software between Aix, HP-UX, Solaris, GNU/Linux and Windows NT/2000 back the late 90's up to until 2003.

That is where I learned what actually means "portable" UNIX software, specially if it needs resources like audio, external hardware or GUIs.

Nowadays, SDL, the proliferation of X, and OpenAL make the situation better. But it's still a mess.