[Info-vax] VMS terminal port/class doc... no it's not...

[John Reagan]

"JF Mezei" <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote in message 
news:4ce33fc5$0$2163$c3e8da3$9deca2c3 at news.astraweb.com...
> VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>>   The interface for terminal class drivers on OpenVMS I64 is a call-based
>>   interface. This is a significant difference from the JSB-based 
>> interface
>>   on OpenVMS Alpha that uses registers to pass arguments.
>
>
> It was explained to be that for that IA64 thing, VMS engineering decided
> to use an Intel provided image header format to allow the re-use of
> linker code provided by Intel.
>

Well somebody explained it wrong.

The linker does not contain any Intel code.  Lots of code from the Alpha 
linker and brand new code written by VMS engineering.

We decided to use ELF to be more industry standard and to allow the use of 
the Intel compiler technology for C++ and the Itanium assembler (both of 
which already knew how to write ELF files).  ELF isn't an "Intel-provided 
image header format".  ELF is part of the System V ABI.  You can find it 
yourself at

http://www.sco.com/developers/gabi/2009-10-26/contents.html

John