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

[Jan-Erik Soderholm]

johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk skrev den 2015-06-05 15:43:
> 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...

You mean, apart from: http://llvm.org/ ??

And I guess that KVM is this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel-based_Virtual_Machine


> to OS-independent stuff which might be relevant to the VMS world in due
> course.
>
> Thanks for the update.
>