Use of the Porting Assistant

The Porting Assistant needs to know which source files you intend to port and where they are located on your Tru64 UNIX workstation or server.

You can make the files accessible in different ways, such as mounting a remote disk using NFS or copying the files via FTP. Anticipate that you will be making some source changes and producing object files. Determine how you want to manage these changes with respect to the other platforms where your application runs.

You tell the Porting Assistant which source files you want to port either by providing a makefile that builds the application or by manually describing the source files (wildcard syntax is valid) and the compilation options.

Changes that you need to make to your application typically result from parts of your application not compiling, linking, running, or running poorly.

The Porting Assistant concentrates on getting your application to compile and link. It does this by running a sequence of checks on your source files to build a list of possible problems for you to investigate. This process is made easier thanks to the Porting Assistant's ability to display the source code associated with specific problems in an editor. You can also get additional information about the problems and suggested solutions by using the HyperHelp, which is directly linked to specific diagnostic messages.

The issue at link time is frequently undefined symbols. The Porting Assistant includes a browser that will help you find a routine on Tru64 UNIX whether it is in an alternate library or has a different name.

For debugging and tuning, HP sells other products including  FUSE. FUSE and the Porting Assistant are very similar in design; in fact, they share common tools.

Once you've located a potential problem, you need to decide how to deal with it. The Porting Assistant helps you to understand the problems by providing detailed descriptions and suggested solutions to each construct it flags. It also provides general discussions of porting issues such as endianism and data alignment. This information is all available using an online HyperHelp system that is directly linked to the Porting Assistant interface, including to specific diagnostic messages.

After you investigate specific problems, you typically have two results:

• No change is necessary.
• You need to modify your code.

To deal with the first case, the Porting Assistant lets you filter out individual or classes of diagnostic messages to make subsequent checking easier to understand. In the second case, you can use the editors integrated with the Porting Assistant or its global search and replace facility to help with the changes.