[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Bill Gunshannon wrote:
> In article <HcednTKQvIhBiCzXnZ2dnUVZ_rWdnZ2d at giganews.com>,
> 	"Richard B. Gilbert" <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> writes:
>> Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>>> In article <V49+bpWWDtyc at eisner.encompasserve.org>,
>>> 	koehler at eisner.nospam.encompasserve.org (Bob Koehler) writes:
>>>> In article <7haqjjF2ssv04U1 at mid.individual.net>, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) writes:
>>>>> You just won't accept that there are other ways tio us Unix than a shell,
>>>>> will you.  At least there has been since the TTY went away.  :-)
>>>>    I have, and I do, but the application's interface is not the OS
>>>>    interface.
>>>  
>>> So, now we are back to arguing what is OS and what is an application
>>> on top of the OS.  Is BASH part of the OS?  Is DCL?  I really don't
>>> think any "OS" has a "user" inteface.  They all have an API for which
>>> various user interfaces get written.  Under Unix, a "shell" is just a
>>> user level program.  One is not even necessary in order for the OS to
>>> be functional for regular users.  Kind of like menu driven captive
>>> accounts on VMS that offer no access to DCL for the user.
>>>
>> I think you could make a very reasonable case that DCL is part of the O/S.
>>
>> 1. DCL is part of system startup.
> 
> So is the UNix Shell.

I know that there is some sort of a Unix-like shell on some recent 
releases but I think it was only in recent releases.  V3.7-V5.5-2 didn't 
have a Unix like shell.  I don't recall one in V6.x.  I'm not sure just 
when Posix came along.  I do know that the POSIX shell is a piss poor 
substitute for a genuine Unix shell.  The last time I tried (it was 
maybe four years ago) the VMS POSIX shell was not capable of running the
"configure" script for NTP.

> 
>> 2. DCL is part of system shutdown.
> 
> So is the UNix Shell.
> 
>> 3. DCL ships with the VMS binaries.
> 
> So is the UNix Shell.
> 
> 
> And yet, not part of the OS.  Simple question.  Forget about the
> inability to configure anything, would the VMS kernel run if DCL.EXE
> were not present on the system?  If the answer is yes, you make the
> call.

Probably, but THEN what would you do?  There is a hell of a lot more to 
VMS than "running the kernel".  There has to be SOME interface that lets 
you do some useful work with the system.  Without such, a computer is 
nothing more than a very expensive electric heater!