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IBM Developer Domain: Porting OS/2 Applications to Linux (in C)

[ Thanks to Frank for
this link. ]

“When the decision was made to port the OS/2 version of LANDP to
Linux, the team already had experience in porting from OS/2 to NT.
The NT port contains two main approaches:

  • “A mapping layer
  • “An abstraction layer

“The abstraction layer is a little less complex than the mapping
layer. The abstraction layer is a thin layer of software
abstraction that abstracts function names, parameters, and their
return codes, whereas the mapping layer attempts to mimic the
behaviour of OS/2.

“For the Linux port, we began by developing an abstraction
layer. It became apparent early on that the layer would require a
lot of additional function. The abstraction layer evolved into a
mapping layer. The mapping layer is a shared object that has an
interface exactly like the OS/2 interface and tries to mimic the
exact behaviour of OS/2. However, LANDP requires only a subset of
the OS/2 functionality and therefore the mapping layer is not a
full implementation…”


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