New architectures support for ALMA common software: lessons learned

ALMA Common Software (ACS) is a distributed control framework based on CORBA that provides communication between distributed pieces of software. Because of its size and complexity it provides its own compilation system, a mix of several technologies. The current ACS compilation process depends on specific tools, compilers, code generation, and a strict dependency model induced by the large number of software components. This document presents a summary of several porting and compatibility attempts at using ACS on platforms other than the officially supported one. A porting of ACS to the Microsoft Windows Platform and to the ARM processor architecture were attempted, with different grades of success. Also, support for LINUX-PREEMPT (a set of real-time patches for the Linux kernel) using a new design for real-time services was implemented. These efforts were integrated with the ACS building and compilation system, while others were included in its design. Lessons learned in this process are presented, and a general approach is extracted from them.