A course in software portability

Abstract

This paper describes an experimental course on the topic of software portability, and initial experience in teaching this course. With the continuing proliferation of both applications and computing environments, the need for portability is being increasingly recognized. A large proportion of the software now being developed will eventually need to be ported to new environments. Yet this topic is missing from most computer science and software engineering curricula. The course described here was designed to explore practical issues in the development of portable software. Lectures and discussions on portability topics are combined with the ongoing development of a simple software project designed to expose a variety of portability problems. During the course the project is ported to several environments and redesigned to improve its portability. This course has been taught experimentally with encouraging results. Student assignments have used novel and effective methods to overcome portability barriers. Feedback from student indicates that they have become more aware of portability issues to be considered in software development, and have gained experience with system interface issues in several programming environments.