Porting IRIS GL to Open GL?

Question

Hi I'm really new to IRIX, IRIS GL, and Motif.

I must compile more than 30 C codes written in 1997. Because these sources require header files such as XmAll.h, Xlib.h, and so on, I thought I just needed Unix and Open Motif to compile them. I installed FreeBSD as a guest OS on my Mac OSX, so almost all missing header files were found. (except "device.h," "sphere.h," and "image,h")

But about > 1000 errors occur due to "device.h" and calling qdevice function with numerous undeclared constants. I just found that "device.h", qdevice function calls, and undeclared constants are for Irix Operating system that I've never heard.

In summary, these source files 1) depend on Motif Programming toolkit for X Windows 2) use Iris GL for 3D graphics 3) run and must be compiled in Irix Operating System (not sure because the result is *.exe file)

When I googled them, I found that there is a way to port from Iris GL to Open GL.

If I successfully port these sources from Iris GL to Open GL, can I run this program in any platform such as the recent version of Mac OSX and Windows?

Could you give any suggestion to compile and run these sources on my Mac OSX or Windows?

Thank you so much!

Kyu

Answer 1

'Porting' such old applications often equals rewriting them.

There is the port from IrisGL to OpenGL, which will relatively easy for the 'GL' part. IrisGL had some functions related to windowing and other utilities, which are not in OpenGL. I suggest using appropriate open source libraries.

If you want to run on OS X and Windows, you'll have to rewrite the GUI from Motif to (my suggestion) Qt. Motif and Qt are worlds apart, so you are probably best of by recreating a Qt application based on Motif screenshots.