[Info-vax] FreeAXP/Avanti 2.2.0.435 Released

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2012-10-17 23:16:03 +0000, David Froble said:

> JF Mezei wrote:
>> On 12-10-17 17:10, VAXman- @SendSpamHere.ORG wrote:
>> 
>>> I've ported 100s of VAX applications, utilities, drivers, etc. to Alpha.
>>> I've never found anything difficult or impossible, and I never found a 
>>> single bit of VAX software that was not portable.
>> 
>> Try porting VAX applications that made use of Message Router callable
>> interface.  Since the later was not ported to Alpha, it becomes prety
>> hard to port your apps to Alpha.

Not the first prerequisite that's gone missing.  Undoubtedly not the 
last, either.

> What is so hard about writing your own messaging software.

Well, beyond designing and writing and maintaining it, getting past my 
own dislike of writing stuff that somebody else has probably already 
written?

It might pay to look at ZeroMQ, or another package, for instance.

> Might be more usable to your particular software than some generic package.

For me, it's more a case of what's central to the value-add I'm aiming 
for, and what's not.  If there is some reason {performance, features, 
whatever} to create a custom implementation, have at.  But for other 
cases, rolling your own implementation ties up your own staff writing 
and supporting something that doesn't move your primary {product, 
service, whatever} forward.  That's bad.

> Can you give me examples of procedures than can be done on a VAX that 
> cannot be done on an Alpha, or IA-64?

Accessing Q-bus and Unibus widgets would be somewhat gnarly.

You'd have to roll your own connect-to-interrupt support.

Code that's dependent on precise traps or that makes heavy use of 
exceptions can get slow.

There are other snags, and there are other products that never made it over.

> There is a reason some of us are entitled to the title "Software Engineer".

Pesky software engineers; get off my lawn!

But more seriously, there's a lot of writing of code yet to do, but 
software integration is increasingly important part of the job.

And yes, sometimes you integrate on something that ends up getting 
retired, or not ported, or not maintained.  Message Router, CDSA, etc.  
 Or dependent on something that's a moving target, such as OpenSSL.  
Welcome to the other part of the job.

-- 
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