[Info-vax] September 6, 2016 - new Roadmap and State of the Port updates now on VSI website

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2016-09-08 16:13:43 +0000, Craig A. Berry said:

> ...While SSIO is important for some use cases, they aren't the ones 
> I've run into personally. I would rather see a decent pipe() 
> implementation in the CRTL.
> 
> SSIO will likely involve looking at how I/O is done in the CRTL more 
> generally and how it could be done better. For example, is $IO_PERFORM 
> used where it can be, or is everything still using $QIO or RMS?

The C I/O implementation on OpenVMS is (necessarily) a morass of 
compromise, compatibility with how OpenVMS works, standards compliance 
and conflicts with how OpenVMS works.

All those logical name knobs are areas the developers didn't want to 
break compatibility; an exit or an out from one of the (many) decisions 
involved.

Even the logical name knobs are themselves a compromise; to avoid 
increasing the scope of the work with a more generic and more 
integrated solution.

It's still seems odd that the C implementation on OpenVMS doesn't have 
better descriptor support baked in, too.  It's all structs and 
includes.  Which works.  But makes for reams of glue code.

There's no right answer here, and meeting the expectations of the 
OpenVMS-native crowd and the portable C crowd can easily end up in 
conflict.

I'd really prefer to see somebody look at the whole environment — C, 
and then the CLE and beyond — and try to find better designs, and start 
moving in that direction.

Toward 2021 and 2026.  Not (blindly) preserving designs and decisions 
and compromises and trade-offs made in years past.



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