Book details of 'Software Portability With Imake (Nutshell Handbook)'

Title	Software Portability With Imake (Nutshell Handbook)
Author(s)	Paul Dubois
ISBN	1565922263
Language	English
Published	September 1996
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
UNIX is *the* open system. Software is portable between UNIX systems (and, indeed, to other platforms) generally because of distribution via C source code. Development and tuning of C language programs is assisted by the "make" utility which automates the building, or making, of the actual executable programs from the incremental versions of the source. Makefiles specify the compiler, files, directories, installation, and so forth. Makefiles are often used in the distribution of software. The level of detail, though, which renders them particularly helpful in the development process, is very machine-specific and, therefore, is unsuitable for distribution. Enter imake. imake is not a replacement for make. Along with a series of templates, configuration files, and rules, imake produces Makefiles specific to the target machine. Thus, it can play a pivotal role in software portability and distribution which currently takes time and trouble across platforms. imake is currently an inelegant, forceful, demanding system, the only saving grace being that it works. DuBois does not negate the difficulties of working with imake. He does, however, work slowly, carefully and steadily to give the reader a full understanding of the imake system and the structure of the files necessary to it. imake is often seen as merely an adjunct to the X system (an error made more understandable, as the originator of imake later worked on X11). DuBois uses X examples, but points out the more general uses of imake as well. Portability is a major strength of UNIX--but a major problem for non-programmers. imake could play a part in changing that situation. Hey, it worked for X. (Speaking of which, the current version has been updated to cover the current version X11R6.1. It also looks at imake for Windows NT, and some quirks with OpenWindows/Solaris.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1995
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