Porting

In computer programming, porting is a translation of a piece of software to a particular API, operating system, or generally any other computing environment than that for which it was written.

To port software is to edit it so that it can be compiled or otherwise run on that platform. This process may be extremely easy, requiring few (if any) tweaks to the code, or it may involve a lengthy and extensive rewrite. One of goals of software enginnering is ease of porting process or portability.

Among common obstructs in porting are difference in endian and lack of particular hardware features such as floating-point number operation.