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Portability issues

The jitter command has been entirely implemented in ANSI C to allow easy portability over most Unix platforms. Support is actually provided for all POSIX-compliant operating systems including the real-time extensions. This covers at least Sun OS, Solaris, HP-UX, Linux, Ultrix, OSF/1, and IRIX. Other Unix flavours have not been tested yet.

Things to consider when using eclipse on different machines are mainly the endian-ness of the local processor (Intel or Motorola type). FITS data are stored in Motorola format, and it improves quite a lot the amount of disk accesses to work on Motorola like processors (Sun stations, PowerPCs, HPs, etc.), since it is possible to work with the input data without need of binary conversion. Intel compatibility is supported, but the price to pay is a (huge) overhead in data I/O due to binary conversions.

To know which kind of processor family your station belongs to, use the endian command from eclipse .



Nicolas Devillard
1999-06-21