[Info-vax] "VSI OpenVMS VAX"

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2019-11-21 kl. 20:59, skrev Alexander Schreiber:
> Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>> On 11/21/2019 11:32 AM, dgordonatvsi at gmail.com wrote:
>>> On Wednesday, November 20, 2019 at 5:51:35 PM UTC-5, Jan-Erik Söderholm wrote:
>>>
>>>> But then on a sunny day, VSI loded the kit, changed a few things
>>>> and presssed the "build" button, and voila, there we had an
>>>> "VSI OpenVMS Alpha" distribution.
>>>
>>> If you believe it was that simple, I've got some great swamp land in Florida to sell you.
>>>
>>
>>   From a few things I've heard thru the years, it's my understanding that
>> it is not a simple operation.  But I'm curious, can you explain what the
>> steps are, in a general manner, in 10 to 20 lines of text?
> 
> I have no actual insight how it is really done, but here are my
> speculations:
> 
> Well, first you've got to obtain suitable VAX machines for building the
> binary distribution set. And I've got a sneaking suspicion that the build
> process is far from the usual "./configure ; make ; make install clean"
> process one is used to from many OpenSource projects and far more involved.
> 
> That's the first chunk of engineering time - can't really fob this off on
> a cheap intern that just came through the door.
> 
> Next one is doing whatever set of machine verification tests are available,
> e.g. run the appropriate test suites on all machines and (to a reasonable
> degree) hardware configurations still claimed as supported. This can
> easily burn significant amounts of engineering time.
> 
> So I imagine doing an actual release to be a bit of a costly affair that
> is not done on a lark.
> 
>> I'd also ask, could the process be simpler?  And if so, will proposed
>> simplification be implemented as part of the x86 builds?
> 
> For x86 I can image a much newer and more streamlined build system to
> possibly exist, since this platform is still in very active development.
> 
> Backporting the build system from x86 to e.g. VAX would only make business
> sense if there were regular VAX builds expected to happen in the future and
> I don't expect that to happen.
> 
> This is not an Open Source product where people to things like that because
> they want to - last time I checked, VSI was not a charity, so if they invest
> non-trivial engineering effort in something, they justifiably expect a return
> on that investment.

Yes, I clearly said that there is probably no business case, my point was
that there is no difference (today) in regard to the HPE agreement between
VAX and Alpha.


> 
> Kind regards,
>             Alex.
>