Software tool construction is a risky business, with uncertain rewards. Many tools never get used. This is a truism: software tools, however brilliantly conceived, well-designed, and meticulously constructed, have little impact unless they are actually adopted by real programmers. While there are no sure-fire ways of ensuring that a tool will be used, experience indicates that retargetability is an important enabler for wide adoption. In this paper, we elaborate on the need for retargetability in software tools, describe some mechanisms that have proven useful in our experience, and outline our future research in the broader area of inter-operability and retargetability.
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