[Info-vax] GNV

[John E. Malmberg]

On 1/21/2016 8:04 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-01-21 22:18:45 +0000, John Reagan said:
>
>> I'd love to remove PCSI's /DESTINATION qualifier.  Plus, the GNV
>> install script also gives you the ability to move the POSIX root as
>> well (the default is on the system disk).  Kerry (and others who
>> bumped into this) went out of their way to use /DESTINATION or asked
>> to move the POSIX root.  I also see no benefit.
>
> It's in the GNV documentation.  Start there.  Yank that startup schtick
> from the kit, too.   Yank anything in the kit that allows or supports
> relocating the kit.
>
> Deprecate the PCSI /DESTINATION qualifier for general use.

It is not the PCSI /Destination that is the issue.  The existing GNV 2.x 
through 3.0.1 kits did not really use PCSI tools for the install.  The 
kit builder made up a hack to unpack some type of archive into the 
resulting directory structure and just used PCSI to deliver that archive.

At first the gnv$startup.com did not know how to find where the 
/destination caused the kit to be installed.  Later kit versions were 
updated so that gnv$startup.com could find the correct volume.

Then for GNV 2.1.x, a PSX$ROOT was hacked on to this which added to the 
mess.  Especially if you did not add gnv$startup.com to the system startup.

Because the GNV 2.x and GNV 3.0.1 kits use their own archive 
installation method, they also delete everything in the [vms$common.gnv] 
directory on install.

See: https://sourceforge.net/p/gnv/wiki/InstallingGNVPackages/


PCSI has several issues.

1. It does not fully understand ODS-5, even the versions that claim to. 
  It kind of works if you are lucky.  Assuming that it does not support 
ODS-5 at all makes installations more successful.

2. It does not really understand that you can have multiple disks to 
install on.  It assumes that it is installing on the boot disk and that 
the /destination disk is the boot disk.  So it does not know to put 
stuff in SYS$HELP: and SYS$STARTUP that it should.  Or VMS does not know 
enough to have SYS$HELP: and SYS$STARTUP be search lists for all the 
volumes that PCSI has installed things on.

3. PCSI kit builder knows that all files with the same name have the 
same content regardless of what directory they are found in.  So if you 
have a [.vms]readme. and a [.linux]readme. file, PCSI kit builder will 
grab one of them at install time and use it for both copies when doing 
the install.

Regards,
-John
wb8tyw at qsl.network