It can make an executable image for a platform. I haven't done it myself, but the tool can make a Unix image on a Windows platform, etc. (or so I hear).

A single image for all Unixes? I highly doubt that. Building a single image "just" for all Linuxes out there is at least hard, if not impossible. Just look at the various CPUs Linux can run on, not to mention libc versions, processor optimized code, and so on.

Also, ActiveState lists only Windows, Linux, Mac OS X in the free edition, plus Solaris, HP-UX and AIX in the commercial editions. Where are the BSDs? SCO? Minix? All those legacy Unixes?

It might be a fun or research project to write a single executable that can run "just" on all CPUs Linux supports. For some people, it might be even more fun to make that executable run on non-Linux systems. But those won't end in a commercial project, simply because the resulting executable has to be ridiculously large to contain binary code for all the different platforms. See also fat binary, FatELF. Note that ELF is just one of many executable formats, FatELF files won't work on systems that can't execute ELF files.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

In reply to Re^2: Best perl compiler?? by afoken
in thread Best perl compiler?? by diamondsandperls

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