[Info-vax] Programming languages on VMS

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2018-02-09 22:48:05 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:

> On 2/9/2018 5:13 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> On 2018-02-09 19:39:44 +0000, Arne Vajhj said:
>>> On 2/8/2018 11:33 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>>>> HPE and VSI can and should be providing patches to Java, though there 
>>>> haven't been patches or updates kitted and tested and passed through 
>>>> for OpenVMS based on the various Oracle security updates.
>>> 
>>> They release occasionally.
>>> 
>>> 5.0 got an update 9 in April 2016 equivalent to Oracle 1.5.0_85.
>>> 
>>> 6.0 got an update 7 in September 2017 equivalent to Oracle 1.6.0_151.
>> 
>> Those are very old versions of Java.
> 
> They are very old indeed.

The OpenVMS Java 5 is current.  So there's that.   As for Java 6, 
update 181 is current.  Not 151.   OpenVMS Java 8 is also not current, 
as was mentioned.

> But HPE does support them.

The advent of Java 8 for OpenVMS did clear the worst of the issues with 
the previous available versions for the folks using Java on OpenVMS.

I do expect to see Java 8 updates arriving occasionally for OpenVMS 
I64, though clearly those will not be arriving nearly as frequently as 
Oracle releases updates.  Java on x86-64 is more mainstream, so there's 
likely some benefit to that hardware configuration.  Once OpenVMS 
x96-64 arrives.

I don't know if there'll be a whole lot of interest among OpenVMS folks 
for the Java releases between Java 8 LTS release and the next LTS; the 
Java 11 / Java 18.9 release.  That's later this year.  That release 
will probably see a Java port to OpenVMS, too.

As was mentioned, I'm not running Java locally and have no interest in 
unnecessarily adding that dependency into the local environment or into 
local configurations.  Java doesn't bring anything notable over some 
other tools and frameworks already available and in use, and it's some 
of those other tools that I'd prefer to see integrated into the OpenVMS 
base distro and not Java, and nothing I'm presently working with has a 
dependency on the JVM.  If Java works for you and yours, by all means 
use it.



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