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

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Friday, 5 June 2015 12:45:39 UTC+1, clairg... at gmail.com  wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2015 at 4:14:51 AM UTC-4, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
> > In article <mkqudh$s1c$1 at dont-email.me>, "Robert A. Brooks"
> > <FIRST.LAST at vmssoftware.com> writes: 
> > 
> > > If there is any portion of VMS that is going to be rewritten
> > > in a new language for the purposes of removing the requirement
> > > of the original language, it would be stuff that's written in Ada.
> > > 
> > > That said, we recognize the importance of Ada for many of our customers,
> > > so we will have an answer at some point (and I have no idea when that point will be).
> > 
> > Is there a list of compilers which VSI plans to support?  Is there a 
> > list which they plan to support better, which means supporting the 
> > latest standard completely within, say, two years of publication?
> > 
> > VAX FORTRAN was the gold standard of compilers.  It was Fortran77.  The
> > VMS Fortran95 compiler is also good.  Unfortunately, that's the latest
> > supported standard.  While I am very much "old school" regarding Fortran
> > programming, I do use new stuff if a) it is better (it usually is) and
> > b) it is something I need.  With regard to the latter, Fortran90 brought
> > in a lot, and Fortran95 (a much smaller revision) brought in a few more
> > things.  Since then, I haven't looked at the standards in detail.  Once,
> > however, I ran across something which is possible in Fortran95 but in an
> > ugly-workaround sort of way, which is elegantly solved in a later
> > standard.  I'm sure there are at least a few more things I could use, 
> > and even other old-school programmers can make use of many new features 
> > which I don't use.
> > 
> > I also remember, back when I was working in academia, that someone 
> > wanted to use the CXX compiler on VMS since it was better than the one 
> > on SUN.  (Really!  Standard code wouldn't compile with the SUN 
> > compiler.)
> > 
> > It would be nice if VSI could bring VMS compilers back to the cutting 
> > edge.
> > 
> > Make Steve Lionel an offer he cannot refuse.  :-)
> 
> There are many questions here and I think I could answer them all right now but some topics I talk about in public presentations so here are few answers.
> 
> VMS has nine language compilers: Ada, BASIC, BLISS, C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, MACRO, and PASCAL. Plus, we need the assembler for each architecture. Our thought is to concentrate on keeping C, C++, and FORTRAN up to date standards-wise and evaluate the needs of the others as they arise.
> 
> Even if we eliminate our own use of Ada we will still need to provide a compiler for the customers so all nine compilers will be on x86 regardless of our own internal needs.
> 
> For our GEM-based compilers (BASIC, BLISS, C, COBOL, FORTRAN, PASCAL) we will continue with the current frontends and integrate them with the LLVM (LLVM.ORG) backend code generator. MACRO is a little different but will also connect to LLVM. One of the many nice things about LLVM is that it targets multiple architectures.
> 
> VMS_LOADER.EFI is written C and reasonably standard for any platform. (We get if from UEFI.ORG.) We added a few modules in assembler (for Itanium). Our VMS_LOADER.EFI calls the primary VMS loader IPB.EXE and it is also mostly C with a bit of assembler. These two files do most of the configuration setup and when IPB brings in and starts SYSBOOT we are off an running. That is the short version of booting, of course there are a million things happening to make this all work.
>  
> Not emulators but VMs. We need to run directly on x86 and as a VM guest and we plan to take advantage of the debugging environment of KVM whenever we can along the way. I'm getting lots on "advice" from the KVM folks on the advantages.

Some interesting snippets there, probably with far more behind them
than can sensibly be discussed here and now, perhaps both technically
and commercially.

Is there a boot camp this year?

Is this kind of thing (primarily languages, maybe tools where they
impact languages) a suitable topic for a session (or two) there,
which can then be recycled around the world as appropriate?

There may also be people who will soon have a new-found interest in
LLVM and/or KVM; some readers will already know about these things
but others would likely appreciate pointers to OS-independent stuff
which might be relevant to the VMS world in due course.

Thanks for the update.