Order of the Butterfly
Posts: 198 from 2009/12/10
From: Minnesota, USA
Quote:
Kronos wrote:
For systems that need binary compatibility (read MorphOS, OS4 AROS_68k) it was never an option.
Even going just for source code compatibility would be an issue as so much old stuff uses datatypes that won't just automatically adapt and expand to 64bits addressing.
And you still wouldn't have tackled anything beyond increasing the amount of useable RAM.
So yes to fix all that you would need completely new APIs.
This could be done by running the "classic" portion of the OS boxed in with a modern OS calling the shoots, or you could have a minimal modern OS running on extra cores/RAM that can be accessed with a limited API (think PowerUP, the OG x86 modules in Amitlhon or even Janus.library for those old bridgeboard).
Haiku with hosted AROS would be interesting but only if it supports pure, resident, reentrant code. Otherwise, just ditch AROS. At least Haiku is POSIX compliant enough to port Linux code more easily. I just wish that the Haiku users would get over their partiality of "native code" even though old BeOS source code is nearly unobtainable and suffers the same ills as AROS ABI v0 when running on 32-bit systems.
