[Info-vax] Open Source on OpenVMS - need some feedback

[Steven Schweda]

   I don't know how much of this qualifies under the current
topic, but back when VMS ran on fast, proprietary hardware,
and I tried to port the BOINC-based SETI at home to VMS (so,
around 2006), I ran into problems like the following:

   "The C++ standard library IOStreams expects floating-point
values in the default floating-point format for each
platform: G_FLOAT on Alpha systems and IEEE on I64 systems." 
In other words, it is (was?) impractical to port a typical
C++ program which demanded IEEE FP to Alpha.  Perhaps this
was fixed later, but I never heard about it.

   CRTL lacked standard shared memory functions, shmget() and
friends.

   CRTL lacked standard UNIX sockets.


> OpenSSL 1.0.1 [...]

   A continuing source of friction with the OpenSSL folks is
the need to work around an old C compiler bug on Alpha where
a 64-bit argv[] does not get properly terminated.  A
hobbyist-accessible C compiler which works better than "HP C
V7.3-009 on OpenVMS Alpha" would be a boon to all.

   I'll just hold my breath.