[Info-vax] TECO, was: Re: What would you miss if DECnet got the chop? Was: "bad select 38" (OpenSSL on VMS)

[John Reagan]

On Sunday, October 9, 2016 at 11:17:44 AM UTC-4, Michael Moroney wrote:
> Simon Clubley <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
> 
> >On 2016-10-08, Michael Moroney <moroney at world.std.spaamtrap.com> wrote:
> >> On 2016-10-07 22:29, Simon Clubley wrote:
> >>
> >>> $ set response/mode=really_really_mischievous
> >>>
> >>> So, is TECO going to be available on x86-64 ? (Not that I've used
> >>> it in over 20 years).
> >>
> >> If VSI is able to write IEST, there will, I guess.
> 
> >(BTW, for people who don't know, the first TECO was created in the
> >early 1960s. That makes it older than I am.)
> 
> And the story goes that the VAX TECO code was so bizarre and convoluted
> that they never tried to convert it to Alpha, so the executable image was
> just VESTed.  When Itanic came along, the VAX TECO code was still bizarre
> and convoluted, but there were still diehards in VMS Engineering who still
> used and wanted it, so the VESTed Alpha image was AESTed.  When x86 VMS
> comes along....?  Thus my post.
> 
> I never looked at the source myself.

I have in the past.  It uses VAX Macro-32 features that the Macro compilers on Alpha and Itanium don't support (for instance, routines that return condition codes).  I have no idea how difficult it would be to modify.  

As posted before, there are some portable implementations around although I'm never used them so I cannot comment on their feature set.