[Info-vax] Perl (for OpenSSL) v. me

[John E. Malmberg]

On 2/7/2016 1:58 AM, Steven Schweda wrote:
>>     I'll give that a try (and report back).
>
>     Manually installing the Text::Template kit worked well enough.
>
>     The new OpenSSL configuration process failed pretty miserably,
> however.  Apparently, abs2rel() isn't doing anything useful on VMS.
> Below is a reduced script which shows some absolute paths and some
> relative paths derived from the absolute paths.  Compare the results on
> a handy Mac with the same thing on VMS:

Perl on VMS has multiple personalities based on PERL* and DECC$* logical 
names that are documented in the VMS specific readme files.

I think the behavior of abs2rel() on VMS is also documented in those 
files.  It may not be able to reliably convert an absolute path name to 
relative on VMS in some cases.

The default for the v5.2x PCSI kits is:

  * Assume VMS format ODS-5 file names on output.[1]
  * Accept either VMS format or Unix file names.[2]
  * Exit with traditional exit code instead of C
    program encoded actual exit code.

[1] Add on CPAN modules may not be aware of ODS-5 format names and apply 
older Perl ODS-2 conventions regardless of the settings.

[2] Some Perl modules assume that VMS <-> UNIX path translations are 
always reversible.  That is not true and will cause issues in some cases.

If you want output for a Unix style build procedure, you will probably 
have to set the appropriate logical names.

Perl 5.22 will also detect when it it was launched from the updated GNV 
Bash shell and go into the Unix mode with C encoded exit code.

Currently work is underway to improve how Bash and Perl interoperate, so 
there are some issues if a Perl script expects bash to be invoked 
instead of DCL.

My recommendation is to use the Bash alias command to map the Perl 
images needed to where Perl is installed.

The updated Bash, Coreutils, Grep, Gawk, ar_tools, ld_tools, make, and 
sed kits can be installed and used to run many configure and resulted 
generated make files with out installing the HP or VSI *GNV* kits.

The newest hobbyist layered product downloads as of Jan 2016 should have 
the current ALPHA C compiler with the fix for the 64 bit argv pointer issue.

Regards,
-John