[Info-vax] VSI: "Official 8.4-1H1 Launch"

[David Froble]

JF Mezei wrote:
> On 15-06-04 06:53, clairgrant71 at gmail.com wrote:
> 
>>  I had a slide once that depicted 5% of VMS knows about the platform and the other 95% does not. 
>> Once you get the compilers and the 5% working you get the rest for free.
> 
> That assumes that all the compilers needed to build VMS are ported to
> the new platform, of course.

Well, yeah, wasn't that understood?

> Are there instances when the engineers may decide it is easier to
> rewrite the few remaining utilities based on language X rather than port
> compiler X ?

I'm not a compiler type.  I know very little about them.  However, I 
seem to recall that multiple languages on Alpha all used the same back 
end, GEM.

Now the front, the parser, and whatever other voodoo is involved, really 
should not be changing much, at least I'd think that.  If whatever the 
front ends feed to the back end (getting kinky here) is consistent, then 
for what reason would any language be left behind?

Also, even if not required to build VMS, there might be some customers 
depending on specific compilers.

True, there is the possibility, though I cannot imagine one, there is a 
serious show stopper.  But without that, why would you ever consider 
leaving something behind?