Hello, I was browsing through older posts that deal with the painful issue of portability (http://www.keil.com/forum/docs/thread8109.asp). I was (and still am) a big advocate of programming as much as possible conforming to the C standard, and having a layered structure that allowed "plugging-in" other hardware. But I have come to change my mind recently. I am reading the "ARM system developer's guide" (excellent book by the way. I'm reading it because I want to port some C167 code to an ARM9 environment) in which chapter 5 discusses writing efficient C code for an ARM. The point is, and it is fairly demonstrated, that even common, innocent looking C code can either be efficient of very inefficient on an ARM depending on specific choices made, let alone another processor used! So, if we are talking about squeezing every clock cycle out of a microcontroller - I do not believe that portability without ultimately littering the code is possible!
My advice is to let the powers-that-be know .... That idiot manager will eventually be looking for a scape-goat, so get it on record before he looks around at his herd of potentials. I once made a machine control system that was to be bilingual. I documented that I did not speak spanish and had inserted other messages to test the code. A salesman requested the prototype for a demo and again I documented that it was not ready and he could not have it.
Of course, being a marketeer, he went in one night and took the unit and went to the customer with it.
Imagine his furor when he found out that 'exit' in "Spanish" was "F... Off".
Having everything documented, I could not be made the scapegoat.
Erik