[Info-vax] Modern software development for VMS, was: Re: source control and semantics (Re: Why so much Unix envy?)

[David Froble]

Jan-Erik Soderholm wrote:
> Simon Clubley wrote 2014-09-14 03:44:
>> On 2014-09-13, Simon Clubley 
>> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
>>>
>>> ACT got their gcc Ada compiler working on VMS by first creating a
>>> cross compiler on Linux. When I was trying to duplicate ACT's VMS
>>> port of gcc using the public gcc kits (ACT have their own private
>>> gcc tree) I got as far as using a cross compiler running on Linux
>>> (the target triplet was alpha-dec-vms IIRC) to build some C programs
>>> to run on VMS and which ran ok on Eisner.
>>>
>>> With that setup (and assuming a public gcc kit which actually works
>>> on VMS) then many of the usual embedded/cross compiler development
>>
>> Oops, typo. Sorry. :-)
>>
>> s/on VMS/for VMS/
>>
>> The idea is that the cross compiler and development environment runs
>> purely on Linux and only the final generated executables run on VMS.
>>
>>> environments become available for VMS development and you can choose
>>> whichever one you want.
>>>
>>
>> Simon.
>>
>>
> 
> Editing and (cross-) compiling on another platform is
> reasoanble easy. Cross-linking gets far more complicated
> when you need a lot of resident libraries from 3'rd party
> suppliers (such as Rdb) beeing available for the linker.
> 
> And you can (have been done) have IDE running on your normal
> desktop with compile/link using *on* VMS. If integrated well,
> it doesn't matter this it compiles on VMS.
> 
> Jan-Erik.

I confess, I don't understand this "modern software development" and 
using cross compilers.  What's wrong with using a VMS system?  What's 
wrong with directories containing source files, build files, and such?

Confused ....