[Info-vax] Running OpenVMS native on x86 . . .

[Paul Sture]

On Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:25:31 -0700, Keith Parris wrote:

> On 12/9/2011 10:20 AM, BillPedersen wrote:
>> But the real issue of any port to any platform is whether you will get
>> the VARs and ISVs to follow.  OpenVMS does not have a good track record
>> here.  Each time it has been ported it has lost 30% or more of its
>> applications.
> 
> With the port from VAX to Alpha, and then again from Alpha to Itanium,
> the OS was ported along with compilers and layered software products,
> and a tool (VEST, then AEST) for translating (at least most) binary
> images to native code was provided. Then ISVs, VARs, and customers were
> left to their own devices to port their code to the platform, given the
> tools provided.
> 
> It might be possible to learn from the way architectural transitions
> were handled in other cases in our industry. For example, when Apple
> went from PowerPC to Intel x86 CPUs for the Mac, from what I've read,
> the transition was made fairly seamless for users; they could run
> PowerPC applications on the new platform without modification. One might
> imagine a capability where a VAX, Alpha, or Itanium image might run,
> unmodified, on an x86 platform, if a similar capability were implemented
> for an x86 architectural transition for VMS.

"Fat binaries" were also a feature of Apple's PPC to Intel transition. 
These contained the binaries for both architectures in a single image and 
you could produce these with a single build.

-- 
Paul Sture