[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[Steven Schweda]

Richard B. Gilbert wrote:

> 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.

   Apparently.

GIMP $ write sys$output f$getsyi( "version")
V5.5-2

GIMP $ posix
psx> uname -a
POSIX_for_OpenVMS_VAX GIMP V2.0(V2.0) V5.5-2 VAX_4000-200 VAX

What else don't you know?

>   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.

   Well, duh.  It takes more than a working shell to do any
useful work, and a typical "configure" script expects to use a
UNIX-like compiler.