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how hardware dependant are carbon?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Nov 2000
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just how dependant on ppc hardware are the carbon language?
is there any API calls that just won't work on other hardware?
What i'm thinking is how difficult it would be to have the carbon framework? running on x86...
let's not go into discussing pros and cons, but is possible to relatively easy run carbon on x86....
is carbon only talking to the kernel or?
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Mac Enthusiast
Join Date: Feb 2000
Location: Storrs,Connecticut, USA
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Dependant on hardware? About as hardware dependant as C++. All carbon is is just a set of C++ API's to write to. If you want to use carbon on another platform you'll have to port all of it's API's. It's no more hardware dependant as Cocoa and Objective C. The majority of the libraries in AppKit and Foundation, in Cocoa, used to be exist as part of the Next OS on x86 hardware. Apple ported them. There's a difference between API's and the underlying programming language. In higher level languages, like C++, you don't need to know much about the hardware. The only thing that is ever really mentioned as a problem in higher level languages like that is the endian issue, and most of the time that isn't a problem. In assembly, knowing stuff about the hardware becomes much more important. Asking if carbon is cross compatible is meaningless. I'm sure that if someone ported the carbon API's to x86 hardware you could write to them but right now you can't. Anything that you make in "carbon" that compiles and runs on Intel hardware isn't carbon because it's not using any calls to carbon API's, it's just ANSI C or C++.
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Nov 2000
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ok thx, what I was wondering was if it's (relatively easy) technically wise to see carbon apps running on macos x86....
i guess it is 
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: San Jose, CA USA
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No, it is not easy. What you're talking about is porting a huge chunk of Mac OS X to x86. Even with access to the original source code, this is very difficult due to all sorts of subtle differences between platforms (like endian-ness), not to mention that Carbon ultimately calls into Quartz and the Window Server, which you'd presumably have to port too. And if anyone outside Apple wants to do it, they will need to re-implement all of Carbon from scratch, which would be a huge effort.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Mar 2000
Location: London, UK
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Except that Apple has already ported a large chunk of the Mac OS X code from Intel to PPC in the first place, and it's been rumoured that Apple has OS X for Intel working internally, which I don't doubt.
Endian-ness isn't that great a problem to deal with, AFAIK. Re-implementing Carbon would be possible, but pretty dumb/pointless. I don't doubt it's possible though, since GNUStep already has most of Cocoa up and running on Linux.
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