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Often, one of these modules is a library or operating system facility, and the other is a program that is being run by a user. An ABI defines how data structures or computational routines are accessed in machine code , which is a low-level, hardware-dependent format.
Binary-code compatibility (binary compatible or object-code compatible) is a property of a computer system, meaning that it can run the same executable code, typically machine code for a general-purpose computer central processing unit (CPU), that another computer system can run. Source-code compatibility, on the other hand, means that ...
In computing, a shell is a computer program that exposes an operating system's services to a human user or other programs. In general, operating system shells use either a command-line interface (CLI) or graphical user interface (GUI), depending on a computer's role and particular operation. It is named a shell because it is the outermost layer ...
Dynamic loading is a mechanism by which a computer program can, at run time, load a library (or other binary) into memory, retrieve the addresses of functions and variables contained in the library, execute those functions or access those variables, and unload the library from memory.
An example is RAM chips, some of which can run at a lower (or sometimes higher) clock rate than rated. [2] Hardware that was designed for one operating system may not work for another, if device or kernel drivers are unavailable. As an example, Android is not able to be run on a phone with iOS. [3]
Modular operating systems such as OS-9 and most modern monolithic-kernel operating systems such as OpenVMS, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, Solaris, and AIX can dynamically load (and unload) executable kernel modules at runtime. This modularity of the operating system is at the binary (image) level and not at the architecture level.
Machine code intended for a hardware architecture can be run using a virtual machine. This is often used when the intended architecture is unavailable, or among other uses, for running multiple copies. Sandboxing: While some types of sandboxes rely on operating system protections, an interpreter or virtual machine is often used. The actual ...
In multitasking operating systems, processes (running programs) need a way to create new processes, e.g. to run other programs. Fork and its variants are typically the only way of doing so in Unix-like systems. For a process to start the execution of a different program, it first forks to create a copy of itself.