UWIN is a

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as C ...

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

package created by David Korn which allows programs written for the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also in ...

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and ot ...

to be built and run on

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

with few, if any, changes. Some of the software development was subcontracted to

Wipro Wipro Limited (formerly, Western India Palm Refined Oils Limited) is an Indian multinational corporation that provides information technology, consulting and business process services. Thierry Delaporte is serving as CEO and managing director ...

, India. References, correct or not, to the software as U/Win and AT&T Unix for Windows can be found in some cases, especially from the early days of its existence. UWIN source is available under the

Open Source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

Eclipse Public License The Eclipse Public License (EPL) is a free and open source software license most notably used for the Eclipse IDE and other projects by the Eclipse Foundation. It replaces the Common Public License (CPL) and removes certain terms relating to ...

1.0 at AT&T'sbr>ASTUWIN
repositories on GitHub. UWIN 5 is distributed with the FireCMD enhanced Windows shell with the Korn Shell thereof as one of three default shells present at install, the others being the FireCMD scripting language and the default Windows command shell

cmd.exe Command Prompt, also known as cmd.exe or cmd, is the default command-line interpreter for the OS/2, eComStation, ArcaOS, Microsoft Windows (Windows NT family and Windows CE family), and ReactOS operating systems. On Windows CE .NET 4.2, Windo ...

. Other UWIN shells like csh and

tclsh Tk is a free and open-source, cross-platform widget toolkit that provides a library of basic elements of GUI widgets for building a graphical user interface (GUI) in many programming languages. Tk provides a number of widgets commonly needed to ...

and those of other interoperability suites like the

MKS Toolkit MKS Toolkit is a software package produced and maintained by PTC that provides a Unix-like environment for scripting, connectivity and porting Unix and Linux software to Microsoft Windows. It was originally created for MS-DOS, and OS/2 versions ...

and other shells like those that come with

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

and

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called sa ...

distributions inter alia can be added to the menu by the user/administrator.

Technical details

Technically, it is an

X/Open X/Open group (also known as the Open Group for Unix Systems and incorporated in 1987 as X/Open Company, Ltd.) was a consortium founded by several European UNIX systems manufacturers in 1984 to identify and promote open standards in the field of info ...

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

for the Windows

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how t ...

(API), called

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

. UWIN contains: * Libraries that emulate a Unix environment by implementing the Unix API * Include files and development tools such as cc(1),

yacc Yacc (Yet Another Compiler-Compiler) is a computer program for the Unix operating system developed by Stephen C. Johnson. It is a Look Ahead Left-to-Right Rightmost Derivation (LALR) parser generator, generating a LALR parser (the part of a com ...

(1),

lex Lex or LEX may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Lex'', a daily featured column in the ''Financial Times'' Games * Lex, the mascot of the word-forming puzzle video game ''Bookworm'' * Lex, the protagonist of the word-forming puzzle video ga ...

(1), and

make Make or MAKE may refer to: * Make (magazine), a tech DIY periodical *Make (software), a software build tool *Make, Botswana, in the Kalahari Desert *Make Architects Make Architects is an international architecture practice headquartered in Londo ...

(1). * ksh(1) (the Korn Shell) and over 250 utilities such as ls(1),

sed sed ("stream editor") is a Unix utility that parses and transforms text, using a simple, compact programming language. It was developed from 1973 to 1974 by Lee E. McMahon of Bell Labs, and is available today for most operating systems. sed w ...

(1), cp(1), stty(1), etc. Most of the Unix API is implemented by the POSIX.DLL dynamically loaded (shared) library. Programs linked with POSIX.DLL run under the

subsystem instead of the

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines both the system- and user-level application programming interf ...

subsystem, so programs can freely intermix Unix and Win32 library calls. A cc(1) command is provided to compile and link programs for UWIN on Windows using traditional Unix build tools such as make(1). The cc(1) command is a front end to the underlying compiler that performs the actual compilation and linking. It can be used with the Microsoft

Visual C Visual C may refer to: * Visual C++, an integrated development environment (IDE) product from Microsoft for the C, C++, and C++/CLI programming languages * Visual C Sharp C# (pronounced ) is a general-purpose, high-level multi-paradigm progra ...

C++ C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...

5.X compiler, the Visual C/C++ 6.X compiler, the Visual C/C++ 7.X compiler, the

Digital Mars Digital Mars is a small American software company owned by Walter Bright and based in Vienna, Virginia, that makes C, C++ and D compilers, and associated utilities such as an integrated development environment (IDE) for Windows and DOS, which D ...

C/C++ compiler, the Borland C/C++ compiler, and the

MinGW MinGW ("Minimalist GNU for Windows"), formerly mingw32, is a free and open source software development environment to create Microsoft Windows applications. MinGW includes a port of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Binutils for Windows ( ...

compiler. The GNU compiler and development tools are also available for download to UWIN. UWIN runs best on Windows NT/2000/XP/7 with the

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

, but can run in degraded mode using

FAT In nutrition science, nutrition, biology, and chemistry, fat usually means any ester of fatty acids, or a mixture of such chemical compound, compounds, most commonly those that occur in living beings or in food. The term often refers spec ...

, and further degraded on Windows 95/98/ME. (See the External link for more details.) A beta version for Windows Vista and 7 is released as UWin 5.0b (June 2011, 17th). On January 19, 2016, it was announced by AT&T that the AST and UWIN source packages were migrated to GitHub.

Notes

References

* David G. Korn (1997
Porting UNIX to Windows NT

USENIX Annual Technical Conference The USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC, or, canonically, USENIX) is a conference of computing professions sponsored by the USENIX association. The conference includes computing tutorials, and a single track technical session for presen ...

External links

* * This page still contains some useful documentation.
AST github repositoryUWIN github repository
{{Unix-Windows Interoperability Compatibility layers Compilers Free compilers and interpreters System administration Unix emulators