Huge Porting application question

el_scrub · 06-07-2004, 06:43 PM

Heres a weird and difficult question.

Say you were asked to port a Messenger type application to a linux PDA. The main focus being when mail arrives you get alerted and so on.

The main things as far as I can see as for porting would be

MFC applications parts -> wxWindows
RAS API (connecting via ppp so ) -> shell pppd commands.
Windows Sockets -> berkley sockets.

The main problems in porting here from what I could tell is

Sockets -> WSAAsyncSelect has no equivilant in linux ... wondering how bad this is.

RAS API -> porting do think should cause too many problems.

MFC -> wxWindows !!! no idea of a difference`s ???? anybody

From what I gather as well I dont think I need to messenger needs load any services or anything like that , so these should be the main problems with porting (besides byte alignment and ordering etc).

So any idea`s helpful hints .. its for the Sharp Zaurus PDA btw.

regards

Karl

el_scrub · 06-08-2004, 03:39 AM

bump -> really need some help/advice here

kooch · 06-08-2004, 07:53 AM

Quote:

Sockets -> WSAAsyncSelect has no equivilant in linux ... wondering how bad this is.

Berkley sockets have no concept of an 'application window'. Pick up Unix Network Programming by W. Richard Stevens.

Code:

MFC -> wxWindows !!! no idea of a difference`s ???? anybody

http://www.wxwindows.org/

I'll bet it's easier and better designed than MFC :P

You could also do away with the MFC gui code and write one in something like Python Tkinter. If that ends up not performing well enough you can then invest your time in writing the gui in wxWindows or some other cross platform toolkit.

Quote:

(besides byte alignment and ordering etc).

You can hope that whoever wrote the original app wrote portable code then you won't have to worry about this much.

el_scrub · 06-09-2004, 01:35 AM

the question here is now much of MFC`s capibilitiess can be ported using wxWindows, does anybody know ... or will a huge re-write job have to be done ?.

kooch · 06-09-2004, 08:31 AM

Directly from the 1st FAQ on the wxWindows.org about page:

Quote:

wxWidgets is not a translator from one GUI from another; it cannot take a Motif application and generate a Windows application, for example. You need to learn a new API. However, the wxWidgets API has been praised for its intuitiveness and simplicity, and can be far easier to learn and use than a native GUI API such as Motif or Windows. Porting from MFC is particularly easy due to its similarity: one user has ported his CASE tool from MFC to wxWidgets in a couple of weeks.

el_scrub · 06-10-2004, 06:05 AM

eh sorry for being a lazy arse, much oblidged for the help.