[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[Bob Wilson]

> However I do believe that both Clair and Steve have touched on this 
> subject in the past.  Some of the things I recall:
> 
> The build was spread over multiple systems
> 
> The build was not 100% automated (big issue)
> 
> The build included things beyond compiling and linking
> 
> The build instructions might be lost
> 
> The issue then is, someone would have to find or implement a build, and 
> that wasn't going to be simple, easy, or short.
> 
> None of which matters.  The VAX/VMS V7.3 distribution is all that's 
> needed, from a software perspective, and I'm sure multiple people have 
> it, I know  I have a CD with the distribution.
> 

If you're talking about the VAX VMS system build...

The VAX build was similar to but a bit different than the Alpha, IA64 or x86 builds...but anyone doing VMS builds today would recognize it (yes, it's a small number).

One of the last things that I did before they shut down the VAX VMS build environment was to save a copy of the VAX master pack (which is not the same as the Alpha [of the time] master pack -- nowadays Alpha=IA64=x86 [some differing architecture specific facilities, but a *lot* of common code]...the VAX master pack content was never integrated into the Alpha master pack).

If I had a couple of VAX systems [in a cluster] I could probably get it to build again (V7.3) ... stuff was checked in [on the VAX master pack] later(after V7.3) to track changes that were taking place on "the Alpha side" but there were divergences after V7.3 in some facilities (like RMS, I think) and we didn't really have a usable VAX result disk by the time stuff got shipped off to the other side of the world.

The VAX VMS build system was a VAX7660 (a six-cpu "Laser platform based" XMI I/O-based system with CI attached storage, HSJ's I think) and it took about 30 minutes to do the O/S part of the build--there were other VAX6000 series system in the same cluster but they were inconsequential in terms of CPU capability (all being non-XMI2 based configs) . I'd guess that a nicely configured VAX emulator could get it done in much less time (and if you could cluster two of them, even better!)

>From V7.0 onward the build tools were all under revision control on the master pack and were fetched off of the master pack [to the result disk] as part of the VMS build setup process (using a tool called VMSGEN :-)). V6.2 (and earlier) was built with whatever was installed on the "running system" (vs. the "build tools on result disk" model that was always used on Alpha [from V1.0], and adopted later for VAX [in V7.0...though using a somewhat different model then used on Alpha])...so there's no hope of building any version of VAX VMS (or VAX/VMS) before V7.0.

While the VAX master pack was saved, I didn't make a copy of the VDE disk (tip of hat to Steve H), which would be required to checkin any changes to it (the VAX master pack is a bunch of CMS libraries...so changes could be checked in via CMS directly, but it would be rather cumbersome to manage 200+ CMS libraries that way).


bw (VMS Build and Release -- VAX/Alpha/IA64/x86)