>Cross-platform installation technology such as you're describing has >been talked about before; back in the early 90's the OSF/DME software >distribution effort had the goal of shipping software in some >intermediate, platform-neutral form that would then be converted to >native binaries at installation. I don't think it ever got off the >ground (at least that I can recall).
ANDF. No, I don't think it ever got anywehere: for one, you still have this pesky compiler thing at the install phase which will need to be tested. >There have also been (and continue to be) emulation environments which >attempted to solve that problem, and bytecode platforms such as Java >embody some of the same attributes. Indeed; and certainly internally we can run a lot of applications on x86 directly because the applications are either Web or Java based and are therefor platform neutral. >Overall, it feels like a much bigger problem than installation, so I >have to consider it out of scope for this strategy. Quite. Casper
