Re: Platform Dependent Code

[J.J. Sestrich]

dhruva wrote:
> Hello,
>
> On Sat, Jun 21, 2008 at 4:56 AM, Chong Yidong <address@hidden> wrote:
>   
> > <address@hidden> writes:
> >
> >     
> > > How much of emacs is platform dependent code? I am wondering how much
> > > code has to be replaced if you wanted to port emacs to a new platform
> > > essentially: How much of emacs is native c code / libraries and how
> > > much is done through lisp code?
> > >       
> > Almost all the platform-dependent code is in C and concerns
> > terminal/window system communications.  See the w32* and mac* files in
> > the source tree for an example.  The rest of the work is a matter of
> > juggling compilation switches, identifying system call names, etc.
> >
> > (If you provide some information about what platform you are interested
> > in, maybe someone could be more helpful.)
> >     
>
> I feel the most complicated would be the generating the emacs
> executable by dumping a process with elisp code loaded
> (bootstrapping). I remember when working in the OpenVMS labs, on
> Itanium platform, that was the only missing piece in getting a full
> blown working emacs.
>
> -dhruva
>
>   

I was thinking about making a javascript implementation that could be 
used in a browser. It would use some cgi scripts to do file I/O and 
window stuff would probably be easy enough to do with html/javascript. 
At this point, I'm just trying to gauge the level of work that would 
need to be done to make it happen. I would imagine that in addition to 
the windowing and file I/O I'd have to re-write the lisp interpreter, 
but this might be easier to do in javascript than C. I don't really know 
enough about this to judge anything though. Does anyone have any insight 
on these ideas: Size of code to be re-written? Difficulty of code that 
has to be re-done?

J.J.