[Info-vax] Which programming language would you like to see officially supported on VMS ?

[Jan-Erik Söderholm]

Den 2020-08-13 kl. 22:23, skrev Stephen Hoffman:
> On 2020-08-13 15:02:24 +0000, Dave Froble said:
> 
>> On 8/13/2020 8:55 AM, gérard Calliet wrote:
>>> Le 20/02/2020 à 03:45, John Reagan a écrit :
>>>> I'll need Cmake on OpenVMS to build LLVM on x86.
>>> Will we get Cmake and up-to-date LLVM also on itanium ?
>>
>> Gerald,
>>
>>  From some of your posts it appears you're interested in seeing VSI 
>> continue to develop for VAX, Alpha, and itanic.  If so, then you're going 
>> to be disappointed.  All three of those are basically dead products.
> 
> There are a few more years of Kittson-class Integrity hardware support left 
> from HPE when last I checked (2025?), but little other OpenVMS hardware 
> around still has vendor hardware support. It's increasingly third-party.
> 
>> x86 is the beginning of the future.
> 
> Correct. x86-64 is the near-term future, at least until the next port (to 
> arm64? or maybe RISC V?) rolls around.
> 
>> Without being John, I can still pretty much guarantee you that you will 
>> not see LLVM on VAX, Alpha, or itanic from VSI.
> 
> Ayup. That'd be a whole lot of work for dead-end hardware, too.
> 
>> While there are multiple reasons, the main reason is that VSI is 
>> leverging x86 work on LLVM for VMS usage.  As far as I know, there is no 
>> LLVM already on itanic.  Thus, VSI would have to develop the entire 
>> compiler tool chain, and, that just isn't going to happen.
> 
> With a stable x86-64 port, there's a place for folks currently running 
> OpenVMS on Alpha and Itanium to upgrade to.
> 
> That'll be an app port with an x86-64 hardware upgrade that will take many 
> sites five or ten years to complete, too. Assuming prerequisites are 
> available, etc.
> 
> And that porting is also after sorting out which x86-64 hardware 
> configurations are supported, if not booting OpenVMS hosted and/or as a 
> guest in a supported hypervisor.

OK. I do not know what I know, but my guess is that many/most, that port
their VMS environment to x86, will run under a hypervisor.

And that fits well at larger sites where VMS is that weird system that
needs it own weird hardware. If it can be included together with the
other "servers" that just runs in an VM, fine. No new hardware to buy
and install. Just spin up an additional VM...


> 
> I'd expect very few OpenVMS sites are unlikely to switch to new compilers 
> on the same existing platforms. And that work probably only in preparation 
> for an x86-64 port.
> 
> 
> 
>