If you're not kidding about that... fork() is a long-standing thorn when porting code onto some platforms; it's seldom used for what it was originally intended

If you're not kidding about that... fork() is a long-standing thorn when porting code onto some platforms; it's seldom used for what it was originally intended for, and (when it is) the copy-on-write memory semantics and the file descriptors and network contexts and such aren't widely adopted. About 95% of the cases reviewed during the ports were using fork() as a way to start a process; as a way to do a vfork()/exec() and to create a separate process. The remaining 5% of those applications were using the memory address spaces and the I/O channels and the rest of the process context. Which makes those really difficult to port to a platform that lacked a full-on fork().