Subj : Synchronet can maybe...?
To   : Time Warrior
From : zztzed
Date : Thu Jul 14 2005 11:01 pm

  Re: Synchronet can maybe...?
  By: Time Warrior to All on Thu Jul 14 2005 12:54 pm

 >        This may or may not be true, but i've heard that the *nix version of
 > Synchronet is coded to only support PC hardware (a major no-no in the *nix
 > world from what I understand -- its supposed to communicate with the kernel
 > for that stuff not the HW directly).
It's not so much that it's "coded only to support PC hardware" or that 
it communicates with the hardware directly, it's more that the code 
makes certain assumptions about things like byte order that aren't true
on other processors like the G3/4/5, SPARC, etc.  In any case, I believe 
work is underway to make Sync byte-order-agnostic and thus work on any 
processor regardless of endianness.

 >        If I heard correctly, and if anyone might be motivated to correct
 > that, I think that Macintrash going to the "Intel" Chipset is something
 > Synchronet could take advantage of.
While OS X on Intel would make porting Sync in its current state easier 
since it would resolve any byte-order issues that would exist, there 
would still likely be work required in making it use OS X APIs, or at 
least making it conform to the particular quirks of OS X's Unix-like 
APIs.

Also: "Macintrash"?  What is this, 1996?  Do people really still have 
that childish "my platform could beat up your platform" attitude?  Does 
it really bug you *THAT MUCH* that someone, somewhere, is not using an 
IBM-compatible PC?  Because honestly, the IBM PC architecture is nothing 
to write home about...

 >        OSX, as i'm sure you all know, is the Macintosh OS that supports Linu
 > applications. Theoretically, this means a Mac *COULD* run Synchronet.
OS X doesn't support Linux applications, at least as far as I know.  OS 
X supports OS X applications, whether those applications use a GUI or a 
CLI.  There may be an emulation layer like FreeBSD on x86 has that 
would allow OS X to run Linux/PPC binaries, but I doubt it.


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