System-dependent

Describing a process, application, or behavior that relies on and is intrinsically tied to the specific characteristics of a particular operating system, hardware platform, software environment, or combination thereof. It's a characteristic limiting portability, interoperability, and sometimes, maintainability. system-dependent elements are often built or configured to work with a specific set of resources or configurations. Changes to the underlying system can render such elements non-functional or require significant modification. The reliance could stem from low-level hardware interactions, utilization of system-specific APIs, or exploitation of unique configurations. This contrasts with 'system-independent' components designed to function consistently across diverse platforms.

System-dependent meaning with examples

• Legacy applications written for older operating systems often contain significant system-dependent code. Their reliance on outdated drivers and specific API calls prevents easy migration to modern platforms. Attempting to run them on new systems frequently results in incompatibility issues, requiring virtualization or emulation to maintain functionality, highlighting the constraints of system-dependent design.
• A graphics library that directly accesses hardware registers to optimize performance would be considered system-dependent. The exact memory addresses and register layouts vary significantly between different graphics cards and motherboards. Therefore, code written to leverage this optimization is unlikely to work across various hardware setups, illustrating the limitations of this approach.
• A custom build script designed to install software packages and configure services specifically for a particular Linux distribution is inherently system-dependent. The package manager, file system layout, and configuration file formats differ significantly between distributions, requiring the script to be tailored to the target system’s architecture and specifications.
• When developing game software, certain game engines include some features, like optimized physics calculations, which are designed for a specific operating system. This leads to higher performance in that environment, but would not be directly compatible with a different system. This often necessitates platform-specific development to fully harness this performance.