[Info-vax] VMS port to x86

[JKB]

Le Thu, 24 May 2012 15:55:37 -0400,
David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> écrivait :
> JKB wrote:
>> Le Thu, 24 May 2012 02:59:48 -0400,
>> JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> écrivait :
>>> Neil Rieck wrote:
>>>
>>>> If I were HP, I'd have the skunk-works in India working on an x86 port
>>>> right now.
>>> Thyey tried this a few years ago but those skunkworks which also
>>> involved HP-UX were killed because moving HP=UX to x86 would be too much
>>> of an effort.
>>>
>>> With regards to running VMS in emulation. VAX-VMS is over 10 years old
>>> at 7.3. Not developped anymore. And Alpha/IA64 is barely being
>>> maintained/developped anymore. About the only commitment from HP is to
>>> make it run on the upcoming Poulson and Kittson platforms.
>>>
>>> So even if you can continue to run VMS on emulated environments, you are
>>> still limited to whatever VMS version and software are available.
>> 
>> 	Right. I think it's really time to know if we want to assist to VMS
>> 	death or if we want to do somethink to keep VMS alive. Even if VMS
>> 	is a fabulous OS, its design has to be changed. A long time ago, Dec
>> 	has started to port VMS on a microkernel (VMS-O-Mach) and I'm sure
>> 	that if VMS has today still future, it has to be rewritten over a
>> 	microkernel. It's time to drop Bliss and some strange languages to
>> 	write VMS as servers (written in C, ADA or all language you want)
>> 	on top of a real microkernel (not Mach, but L4 for example).
>> 
>> 	But VMS is dying also as porting Unix application to VMS is not
>> 	simple. If you want to propose a lot of softwares, you cannot ignore
>> 	Unix and VMS should have a real POSIX/SysV libc like newlib.
>> 
>> 	Regards,
>> 
>> 	JKB
>> 
>
> I do not share this perspective.  Not saying which if either is a better perspective.  As 
> for Bliss, I have little experience working with it, but it seems to be adequate.  If 
> there is a Bliss compiler, what is the problem?
>
> The language I'd prefer to drop is C, but that's just personal preference, which is what I 
> consider the above suggestion.
>
> VMS does not have to look and feel like Unix in order to be successful.  If that were the 
> goal, then why not just use Unix?

	I agree. But new softwares are written for Windows or Unix, not for
	VMS. Thus, a decent libc is required if you want to keep VMS alive.

	JKB

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