[Info-vax] Whither VMS?

[John E. Malmberg]

Steven Schweda wrote:
> 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.

The POSIX subsystem would not run on recent VMS releases, I forget which 
one it stopped working on.

For at least the last 3 years, GNV has the capability of running many 
UNIX configure scripts.  The ftp://encompasserve.org/gnv directory is 
full of packages that most were built using GNV.

EAGLE> type gnv_ncurses_configure.sh
# DCL Fallback does not work so disable
export GNV_DISABLE_DCL_FALLBACK=1
#
# POSIX exit mode is needed for UNIX shells.
export GNV_CC_MAIN_POSIX_EXIT=1
#
# Where to look for the helper files.
export GNV_OPT_DIR=.
#
# Configure gets this run.
export cf_cv_xopen_source=no
#
# Set the directory to where the Configure script actually is.
cd ../..
./configure  --prefix=/usr --exec-prefix=/usr \
  --disable-dependency-tracking \
  --disable-libtool-lock --enable-reentrant \
  --with-pthread   --enable-widec \
  --enable-ext-colors
#

EAGLE> bash gnv_ncurses_configure.sh
checking for egrep... grep -E
Configuring NCURSES 5.7 ABI 5 (Wed Sep 16 23:40:14 CDT 2009)
checking build system type... alpha-dec-vms
checking host system type... alpha-dec-vms
checking target system type... alpha-dec-vms
Configuring for vms
checking for prefix... /usr
<skip output>
** Configuration summary for NCURSES 5.7 20081102:

      extended funcs: yes
      xterm terminfo: xterm-new

       bin directory: /usr/bin
       lib directory: /usr/lib
   include directory: /usr/include
       man directory: /usr/man
  terminfo directory: /usr/share/terminfo

EAGLE> show sys/noproc
OpenVMS V8.3  on node EAGLE  16-SEP-2009 23:49:28.88  Uptime  474 01:28:43

Regards,
-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network
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