[Info-vax] Where to locate software

[David Froble]

Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2016-06-08 23:18:47 +0000, Paul Richards said:
> 
>> I'm running OpenVMS 8.4 on FreeAXP and am a comparative newbie. So, a 
>> noob question: I am planning to install some of the HP Open-source 
>> software and Freeware.
>>
>> For those applications which don't automatically install where should 
>> I locate them such that I can run them from any directory?
> 
> Welcome!
> 
> I'm one of the resident curmudgeons, and deal with more than few 
> packages and tools, and have worked with more than a few open source 
> packages on OpenVMS.  And I use a mix of operating systems beyond 
> OpenVMS and Windows.
> 
> This is an excellent question!   That's something most folks arriving 
> from competently-designed systems might wonder, too.
> 
> Alas...
> 
> That you even have to ask this question points to a hole in the 
> available documentation and resources.

That's opinion ....

> Worse, OpenVMS itself has no idea how to do this and provides absolutely 
> no guidance, and neither HPE nor VSI has stated any plans around 
> draining this particular swamp.   VSI has come the closest here, with 
> some very general discussions about maybe adding some support for 
> containers in some future release.
> 
> In short...  Have at.  It's a free-for-all.

How is any vendor to know what a user intends to do?  Yes, some framework, which 
may or may not be useful, can be suggested, or imposed.

If one is looking for a general purpose OS, one cannot do better than VMS.  This 
assumes that one has at least a bit of a clue.  It's my OPINION that providing 
flexibility, rather than a rigid framework, is a better design.  Others may have 
differing opinions.

When I first came to VMS it took me several months to understand the flexibility 
available to me.  After that, I never looked back.

Could there be some general suggestions?  Sure.  And they probably exist, in 
multiple places.  It's finding them that could be a problem.  Regardless, with a 
few caviets, which the VMS developers themselves don't seem to follow, it's left 
up to the users of the OS, and some minimal thought allows them to set things up 
in a manner that's reasonable to them.  This vs having to adhere to what seems 
reasonable to someone else.

As for the biggest caviet, at least for me, STAY OUT OF THE DIRECTORY STRUCTURES 
USED BY THE OS!  They can be convoluted enough without introducing unknown third 
party stuff.

> Stick it everywhere, stick it anywhere, however you want, in the system 
> directories

Please, NO!

> or in private directories, it's completely and utterly up to 
> the administrator and to the folks that created the installation kits — 
> even the kits and kitting software lacks any a particular recommended 
> organization for the installed software — which means that you'll have a 
> zillion opinions and absolutely no consistency, even with the vendor 
> products.  Upgrades can be well handled and clear, or they can be a 
> complete train-wreck.   There's no standard way to remove more than a 
> little of the installed software, no auditing of what's installed, and 
> removing installed software — PCSI does better than most here — is 
> completely manually implemented by whoever created the kit or the 
> install.   If they even provide a way to remove the software.   There's 
> a little modular programming documentation that recommends using 
> prefixes on file names and logical names and such — and facility 
> prefixes registered with HPE and VSI, but I'm not sure there's any way 
> to even get those registered these days — but OpenVMS itself *routinely* 
> violates that recommendation, as do more than a few of the open source 
> and commercial packages.
> 
> TL;DR: Vendor app design recommendations?  Doesn't exist.  Application 
> bundles or packages?  Doesn't exist.  App stacking or containers or 
> such?  Doesn't exist.  Sandboxes or jails or BSD pledge() or other forms 
> of application security and isolation?  Doesn't exist.   Recommendations 
> for embedded libraries or frameworks?  Doesn't exist.
> 
> Integrating open source packages?  Always fun.   They all work 
> differently.    Alas.   The (many) other replies here in the comp.os.vms 
> newsgroup will have some examples of the various user recommendations.
> 
>