Calling all Linux Gurus...

[DaddyHoggy]

Background:

My lab runs a specially built port (from *nix to Windows) of ModSAF (Modular Semi Automated Forces - an old DOD CGF the precursor to JSAF and OneSAF). It uses the Motif libraries that come with the Dev version of Exceed to provide enough libraries for ModSAF to trick it into running under Windows. My university is going to give up its Exceed license (too expensive - and they thought almost nobody was using it - save a few academics logging on remotely to/from Windows/Unix/Linux machines, they didn't know about our 200+ copies running in the lab - more than the rest of the Uni put together it turns out).

Anyway, we can and we will almost certainly fall back to academic copies of VMWare and run Linux as a Virtual Machine and run ModSAF as it was inside that. So far not a problem. However, ModSAF is a bit of a bugger to fire up and requires an extraordinary number of command line parameters to fire up correctly on start up. To this end, under Windows, my boss wrote, sometime ago an Systray app that runs on every machine in the lab which hears a network call to start up ModSAF in a particular mode and it fires it up with local admin privileges and feeds it the necessary command line parameters to start ModSAF in the mode we need it to run for a particular lesson/course.

Given that this little app is written in Delphi (my boss's language of choice) I was wondering if it was possible to either a) convert said app to run under Linux (and what the issues might be) b) is there anything available already under Linux that sounds like it might already has the functionality we require or c) how hard would it be to write the equivalent app under Linux (I realise that this is the piece-of-string option as *all* things are possible if you're prepared to spend enough time programming them)

Any thoughts/help much appreciated.

DH

[gizmo]

> a) convert said app to run under Linux (and what the issues might be)

Kylix (a former Delphi port to Linux) or the Lazarus / Free-Pascal combo might help with that.

HTH
gizmo

[DaddyHoggy]

Hi Gizmo and thanks - my boss is aware and has tried Kylix - but it's not mature enough in its abandoned state. However, Lazarus is new to me - I shall investigate.