Wanted: multi-platform shell provider for code debugging, Itanium/IA64 preferred

Does anyone know of a UNIX shell provider that offers access to a multitude of platforms (e.g. Linux/Itanium, Max OS X/PPC, etc.) for debugging and portability testing? I suppose that since this is a common problem that there are such services, but a Google search did not turn up anything interesting...

I am particularl开发者_运维知识库y interested in Linux on various CPUs, IA64 being the most important right now.

Thanks, S.

If you're developing Free software, look at the GCC CompileFarm: http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/CompileFarm

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Launchpad gets pretty close, but it is not clear if their compiler farm can be reached by projects that are not managed by their project management software.

Most people eventually setup their own farm of servers, as simply having access to a machine might not even be enough. Often you will want to determine exactly what software is installed, which makes it very hard to reuse for a completely different project.

Fedora and OpenSUSE have a linux-specific build farms for the architectures they supports. It is unlikley that the extend such services to proprietary (or even non-their-distro) softare projects. That won't do much for the HPUX / Solaris / etc OS platforms.

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Have you tried SSH?

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The problem with Shells is that even when you have a multi-platform shell, each platform has different executables installed, and different options on the executables you'll call from your shell.

For maximum portability, use Bourne shell, without extensions. That said, you'll find yourself in some pretty odd situations; as with Microsoft Windows platforms, Cygwin will require a few path altering tools to work well under the Cygwin environment.

The key is not only the shell, it's how to use it portably. For some guidance, look to this chapter in the Autotools manual

There are many hosts that offer shell accounts. One example, polarhome.com, offers a variety of environments to choose from. I don't believe they have much variety in hardware. Shell accounts cost a one-time fee of "10 local currency units" (minimum US$2 - for a user in the US it would be $10) per account (per environment).

Availability of what you're looking for is going to be somewhat limited, since providers have a number of security issues to contend with.