Developing the portability indices and the portable code generator

Portability is recognized as a highly desirable characteristic of contemporary software design. However, research in the area has not been forthcoming in recent years and much of the work related to the field is ad hoc and speculative at best.;This study attempted to establish a framework for deriving a probabilistic measure of software portability that may be useful in aiding developers to make key design decisions that will result in some quantifiable level of portability while minimizing the cost of incorporating portable design into the software production process.;The research also explored the potential portability benefits that may be derived from applying evolutionary techniques to the design of a specialized tool capable of analyzing source code modules for potential portability issues and then regenerating more portable versions of these modules in a programming language that may or may not be the same as the original program was written in