[Info-vax] HDF5 going going, perhaps soon gone from VMS?

[Joukj]

Dirk Munk wrote:
> IanD wrote:
>> HDF5 is a total rework of HDF4 to the point where HDF5 should be 
>> considered a new work altogether, in fact the custodians of the HDF 
>> data format say they wished they had not even used HDR5 as the new 
>> name given that there is nothing between the two other than a 
>> sequential name in terms of the underlining structure
>>
>> It also seems HDF5 is gaining ground out there in the scientific world 
>> (this is coming from the Scipy crowd etc)
>>
>> Once upon a time VMS had some stature in the scientific world but 
>> alas, it gave up that title long ago :-(
>>
>> Now it seems, in HDF5 circles anyway, that VMS is to be (or has been) 
>> erased from the source code
>>
>> http://lists.hdfgroup.org/pipermail/hdf-forum_lists.hdfgroup.org/2015-March/008397.html 
>>
>>
>> So, if it is not too late and you care and use HDF5 or think it's a 
>> good thing to retain for VMS going forward then perhaps you might want 
>> to get in contact with the folks at HDF to stop 'VMS' being purged 
>> from the source code
>>
> 
>  From this link:
> 
> ftp://www.hdfgroup.org/HDF5/current/src/unpacked/release_docs/RELEASE.txt
> 
> - VMS Build/Test Files Have Been Removed
> 
> HDF5 no longer supports VMS, and the files were getting out of date.
> Since we have no access to a VMS machine, there is no way for us to
> maintain them.
> 
> A Subversion tag was created at:
> 
> https://svn.hdfgroup.uiuc.edu/tags/vms_last_support_1_8
> 
> immediately before removing the files.
> 
> (DER - 2015-02-26, HDFFV-9147

I downloaded the 1.8.15-patch1 and the "trunk"-svn versions. After a 
quick look it seems that only the VMS build files (all .com files) and 
the comlete [.vms] directory is gone, but that all the VMS specific code 
is still in the C-code (And HOFF is right at some stage we have to 
"modernize" in this area). The VMS directory with all the .com files is 
easily restored.
We could try to build a VMS version from the svn-trunk and show that it 
works and then try to get the stuff to be added/changed back into the 
official version.

The steps to be performed
   1) Build initial version from trunk and run the tests.
          I will try this for Itanium next week and later for Alpha.
   2) Perform some tests. We need a group of volunteers for this (I just 
have not enough knowledge of HDF, since I'm just a very occasional user) 
Please let me know who would like to test.
   3) To get VMS-support back into the official support, we need a good 
contact within the HDFgroup. Does anyone has such a contact?


             Regards
                  Jouk