Porting

What Does Porting Mean?

Porting is the process of adapting software in an environment for which it was not originally written or intended to execute in. The term is used interchangeably when referring to the changes made to hardware when it has to be made compatible with other environments.

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Techopedia Explains Porting

Software is considered portable when the cost of porting it to a new environment or platform is reasonably less than writing the software from scratch. Software developers often claim their product is portable, implying that it will take little effort for it to work on a customer’s platform. The three preferred platforms are those from Microsoft, Apple and UNIX, making it easier to develop software that is portable. Still, in the embedded system market, porting remains a significant issue. To simplify portability, modern compilers translate to a machine-independent intermediate code.

Porting is also used to refer to the process of converting a computer game to be platform independant.

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…