Portability

A software characteristic, portability is a form of reusability that helps to avoid “lock-in” to certain operating environments, e.g. cloud providers, operating systems or vendors.

Traditionally, software is often built for specific environments (e.g. AWS or Linux). Portable software, on the other hand, works in different operating environments without needing major rework. An application is considered portable if the effort required to adapt it to a new environment is within reasonable limits. The phrase “to port” means to modify software and make it adaptable to work on a different computer system.