Important: The information in this document is obsolete and should not be used for new development.
What's in This Book
Information in this book is grouped by architecture type: the CFM-based or the original classic 68K runtime architecture.The first nine chapters describe the architecture based on the Code Fragment Manager (CFM) and give details of the PowerPC and CFM-68K implementations.
Chapters 10 and 11 describe the classic 68K runtime architecture, which is the original runtime architecture for Macintosh computers.
- Chapter 1, "CFM-Based Runtime Architecture," gives an overview of the architecture based on the Code Fragment Manager. It includes general information about fragments, shared libraries, and the code fragment resource.
- Chapter 2, "Indirect Addressing in the CFM-Based Architecture," describes the indirect addressing model used in the CFM-based runtime architecture. It describes indirect addressing of data, the use of transition vectors, and also information about the PowerPC and CFM-68K implementations of this model.
- Chapter 3, "Programming for the CFM-Based Runtime Architecture," gives practical programming tips for writing CFM-based architecture code. It also includes information about common pitfalls that can occur.
- Chapter 4, "PowerPC Runtime Conventions," lists low-level conventions such as register volatility and usage; default data types, sizes, and alignments; and calling conventions.
- Chapter 5, "CFM-68K Runtime Conventions," lists low-level conventions such as register volatility and usage; default data types, sizes, and alignments; and calling conventions. Note that much of this information is different from the classic 68K runtime conventions.
- Chapter 6, "The Mixed Mode Manager," describes the workings of the Mixed Mode Manager, which allows transparent switching between CFM-based and classic 68K code.
- Chapter 7, "Fat Binary Programs,"describes fat programs, which can contain code for multiple runtime architectures.
- Chapter 8, "PEF Structure," gives low-level information about the structure of PEF (Preferred Executable Format) files, which are used to store both PowerPC and CFM-68K fragments. This chapter is primarily a reference for those writing programs that generate or analyze executable code (linkers, debuggers, and so on).
- Chapter 9, "CFM-68K Application and Shared Library Structure," describes the file structure of CFM-68K applications and shared libraries in more detail. This material is primarily for those writing development tools.
Appendix A contains tables of terminology, constants, and data types that have been changed from earlier documentation.
- Chapter 10, "Classic 68K Runtime Architecture," gives a summary of the classic 68K runtime architecture, including discussions about the A5 world, segmentation, and the jump table. It also includes information on how to implement the far model (32-bit addressed) version of the classic 68K runtime architecture in MPW.
- Chapter 11, "Classic 68K Runtime Conventions," lists low-level conventions such as register volatility and usage; default data types, sizes, and alignments; and Pascal and C calling conventions.
Appendix B contains information about the MPW RTLib libraries, which you must use if you need to patch the Segment Manager routines in either the classic 68K far model or CFM-68K runtime environments.
A glossary and index are provided at the end of the book.
© Apple Computer, Inc.
11 MARCH 1997