First of all, APR is not a virtual machine or bytecode interpreter like that of.NET common language runtime or JVM. APR is a library (collection of functions) written in C, for C programs. It contains a lot of wrappers to the real standard C library functions, because some conventions of standard library still varies from OS to OS.
For example, the path separator is different in Unix ("/"), Windows ("\"), MacOS (":" - pre X, but also Finder in OS X). Another example is loading dynamically linked libraries
The NSPR offers similar functionality. Info about the NSPR is here [mozilla.org].
I'm guessing by this stage that both the APR and NSPR are industrial strength libs to write cross-platforms against. Both have similar functionality because both underpin web servers (yes NSPR is used by the AOL/Sun iPlanet webserver, and not just Mozilla).
What it might boil down to in the end is which runtime's licence is most compatible with what you have in mind.
What about ACE (ADAPTIVE Communication Environment) [wustl.edu]? It's in C++ (ok, perhaps some prefer C), has lots of added features, and has a really less sadistic license..
In my experience, ACE is really nice, just stay away from TAO as it has little to no _good_ documentation (except for the doxygen stuff and the tutorials). I must say that I've been impressed with ACE though. Perfect for _real cross-platform coding_.
Another interesting site is Accelerating Apache Project [sourceforge.net]. I don't know why this approach was rejected by the Apache Group. I used their State Threads Library with success.
After Firefox 1.0, Mozilla should consider ditching NSPR for APR. The engineering and QA time spent on NSPR (which is pretty much done/frozen) can be redirected to APR. That work would benefit the open-source community, but Mozilla would also benefit from other people fixing bugs in APR.:D
An adequate bootstrap is a contradiction in terms.
Some info on APR ... (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, APR is not a virtual machine or bytecode interpreter like that of .NET common language runtime or JVM. APR is a library (collection of functions) written in C, for C programs. It contains a lot of wrappers to the real standard C library functions, because some conventions of standard library still varies from OS to OS.
For example, the path separator is different in Unix ("/"), Windows ("\"), MacOS (":" - pre X, but also Finder in OS X). Another example is loading dynamically linked libraries
Re:Some info on APR ... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing by this stage that both the APR and NSPR are industrial strength libs to write cross-platforms against. Both have similar functionality because both underpin web servers (yes NSPR is used by the AOL/Sun iPlanet webserver, and not just Mozilla).
What it might boil down to in the end is which runtime's licence is most compatible with what you have in mind.
Re:Some info on APR ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Some info on APR ... (Score:2)
Re:Some info on APR ... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Some info on APR ... (Score:2)
After Firefox 1.0, Mozilla should consider ditching NSPR for APR. The engineering and QA time spent on NSPR (which is pretty much done/frozen) can be redirected to APR. That work would benefit the open-source community, but Mozilla would also benefit from other people fixing bugs in APR.