[Info-vax] CLI editing, was: Re: VMS - Virtual Terminals - A security risk way back yonder OR was that an Old Wives Tale ?

[terry-groups at glaver.org]

On Monday, February 15, 2016 at 11:45:05 AM UTC-5, li... at openmailbox.org wrote:
> The autotools scripts often break on anything besides Linux. I can't count
> the times I've had problems with them on Solaris or OpenBSD. Most Linux
> apps are simply not tested on anything but Linux and gcc and bash and then
> only on Intel hardware, so the foregoing should come as a surprise to
> nobody. The problem isn't only autotools or configure, but it certainly
> starts there. And as soon as you add non-Intel hardware, non-bash POSIX
> shell, or a non-gcc compiler to the equation the fun begins.

VSI (or other folks porting GNUish stuff to VMS) might want to look at the work that's been done in the FreeBSD* ports tree** to reduce dependencies on GNU stuff. A majority of ports are now buildable with clang/LLVM. [For those that don't know, the ports tree includes a FreeBSD Makefile (which front-ends the Makefile of the software being ported), some other files (mostly descriptive) and (if needed) a directory with patches for the various files supplied by the port. So the Makefile might have "CC=clang" type stuff, and the patch files directory might have a patch-configure file.

This allows the port to be fetched in source form from an official distribution site, patched, and built on FreeBSD.

Some software (things that are infrequently used and/or updated, or things that have total dependency on GNUisms) have a "REQUIRES=gcc" or similar in their Makefile.

Looking at what FreeBSD does with a particular piece of software may give someone porting that software to VMS a pretty good idea of where the alligators are (and how many there are) in a given piece of software.

* Other BSD-derived systems may have something similar to FreeBSD ports, and may also be moving to non-GNU toolchains. But my experience is with FreeBSD, so that's what I talked about above.

** Port search: https://www.freebsd.org/ports
   Port SVN repository: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/ports/head