Portability issues in MATE software

The MATE software has been ported onto a variety of different computer architectures under a number of different operating systems. Several of these projects are taken as case studies to illustrate the difficulties encountered and the techniques used to deal with them. Four types of projects are considered: rehosting the MOS (MATE operating system) to a new 1750 A platform with various peripheral suites (systems have been Multibus based and VMEbus based); porting the MTE (MATE test executive) to a VAX/VHS environment; porting the MAC (MATE ATLAS compiler), MOLE (MATE on-line editor), and MTE to a 80286/Xenix environment; and porting the MAC, MOLE, and MTE to a 80286/DOS environment. Each project is analyzed in terms of work inherently necessary by the nature of the task, work made necessary by peculiarities in the target environment, and work associated with the development environment. Timesaving techniques used during development are highlighted. A special subsection is included which discusses the advantages that could have been realized had the original work been done in Ada. The application of Ada in the port process is also discussed