Legacy code Problems for the Enterprise

some people define the Legacy code as the code that works correctly and have been tested and worked with for long years.
the legacy code in many cases need to be ported to accomplish with up-to-date standards and new requiremnets that it is hard or impossible to be implemented in the original legacy code.
A porting may be necessary ,to maintian the same user experience and the quality of system.

Now how to port
I recommend the following approach
but if not be possible

Porting (computer science)

I will discuss here some thoughs about some porting issues and hidden problem, I hope to give 3 years in experience in this field.
first take a look on porting in wikipedia here.

First hoax is, C is not a portable lanaguage ,this is due to vast amount of compiler and each compiler works as a compiler to it own C language.and most Legacy code is written with no regard to ANSI standard.

Most common C compilers

• GCC (I recommend it to much)
• Microsft Compiler
• VisualAge Compiler

My job was to port some application created by IBM Called CT (Consumer Transaction) -which is used in banking system- from windows to linux.
Other thing that make this task very difficult that there are not formal design of code was not available. and we have to figure it out.

the code was about 1.5 MB (plain text code size) and it was first write for OS/2 platform and then ported to Windows and our task is to first port it to linux then makes some modifications and additions to it.

Bye for now