Using the UDK

UnixWare 7 and the UnixWare and OpenServer Development Kit (UDK) provide a natural migration path for your applications. The UDK can be installed on any SCO OpenServer Release 5.0.4, SCO UnixWare 2.1.2, or UnixWare 7 system.

The common development environment provided by the UDK allows you to maximize your development effort for Caldera platforms.

• The same application binary, developed using the UnixWare UDK, can be executed on SCO OpenServer Release 5 and SCO UnixWare 2.1.X if that application is written using a well-defined subset of UnixWare interfaces. (The interfaces supported by the UDK and the systems on which they are supported are listed in ``Base kernel compatibility'' and ``API compatibility''.)

• The UDK provides Binary Compatibility Modules (BCMs) for SCO OpenServer Release 5 systems and one for SCO UnixWare 2.1.X systems. The BCM allows the target system to run a subset of applications developed with the UDK. The BCM provides a modified UnixWare 7 dynamic linker, a modified UnixWare debugger, and modified versions of the UnixWare shared C library, networking libraries, and other shared libraries, These modules must be installed on the target systems to run applications compiled with the UDK.

In effect, UnixWare 7 supports two different ABIs: the (de facto) SCO OpenServer Release 5 ABI and the System V Intel x86 ABI. SCO UnixWare 2.1.X will generate only System V Intel x86 ABI applications. (See ``UnixWare standards conformance''.)

In addition, the common execution environment provided by the UnixWare 7 kernel and runtime libraries permits you to run most existing SCO OpenServer and SCO UnixWare 2.1.X applications without modification:

• Most applications currently running on SCO OpenServer Release 5 (both COFF and ELF format binaries), as well as those running on SCO UnixWare 2.1.X will run on UnixWare 7 with no changes. See UNRESOLVED XREF-0.

• Most applications from other industry-standard platforms or legacy systems (e.g. Open Desktop^® release 3.0 and earlier releases of UnixWare) that ran on SCO UnixWare 2.1.X will run on UnixWare 7 with no changes. See ``Running SCO UnixWare 2.1.X applications''.

The remainder of the sections in this ``Using the UDK'' topic describe various aspects of using the UDK on the supported platforms.

The more general subject of using the UDK libraries, compilers, header files and other tools on any platform is documented under the other topics in Software development documentation.