See MIPS Run, 2nd Edition

Chapter 10 Porting Software to the MIPS Architecture

Very few projects require absolutely all of their software to be created from scratch; the vast majority make use of at least some code that already exists—at the application level, in the operating system, or both. You may well find, however, that the existing code you’d like to use in your MIPS system was originally developed for some other microprocessor family. Of course, at a minimum, you’ll need to recompile the source code to create a new set of binaries for MIPS; but as we’ll see, the task may be more complicated than that. Portability refers to the ease with which a piece of software can be transferred successfully and correctly to a new environment, particularly a new instruction ...