[Info-vax] Some questions on software for VMS 7.3 VAX

[David Froble]

lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2015 11:32:45 -0000 (UTC)
> Simon Clubley via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 2015-12-31, lists at openmailbox.org <lists at openmailbox.org> wrote:
>>> Also, I would like to have an Ada 95 compiler. The Ada that comes with
>>> the hobbyist distribution is supposed to be very good but it's ancient
>>> Ada 83.
>> There is no freely available Ada 95 compiler for VAX (and I would be
>> surprised if even a paid Ada 95 compiler exists given the Ada 83 to Ada 95
>> path taken by DEC for Alpha).
> 
> Didn't understand what you meant with this.
> 
>> There is a paid version of Ada 95 for Alpha from ACT. They use their own
>> GCC source tree and they use the GPL option which allows them to only
>> need to supply source code to their customers.
> 
> Yes, I'm familiar with ACT. To make a long story short a guy used U.S.
> government funding to develop a bunch of products at various universities,
> GPLd them, and made a company to sell them. Still and all very good Ada
> compilers, but no hobbyist versions available.
> 
>> ACT make code contributions to the FSF version of GCC but attempts by
>> myself to build what was available in FSF GCC a couple of years ago
>> didn't get very far (I got a working C cross compiler running on Linux
>> which could build C binaries for Alpha VMS but that was about it.)
> 
> :-(
> 
> Thanks for the info. I'm finding VMS altogether more pleasant to work on
> than Linux but I'm missing a few key pieces partly because I don't have
> real VMS hardware and partly because of lack of software I want.
> 

Use Basic.  You'll like it better.  It's available.  What more could you want?