[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk]

On Wednesday, 22 July 2020 18:23:41 UTC+1, Simon Clubley  wrote:
> On 2020-07-22, Jan-Erik Söderholm <jan-erik.soderholm at telia.com> wrote:
> >
> > Last time I talked to the guy managing it (6 years ago) they were
> > looking at VAX emulators (ELN was/is supported by at least Stromasys,
> > at the time).
> >
> > It sounded as these systems would live as long as the assembly site...
> 
> I wonder what language they used to write their VAXELN applications ?
> Pascal, C or something else ?
> 
> BTW, I could never get the DEC C compiler to work with VAXELN (it failed
> during linking IIRC), so unless there was some compatibility option
> I was missing, it looks like you may have had to use VAX C with VAXELN,
> even after DEC C became available.
> 
> VAXELN Pascal was supplied with VAXELN itself, but you were able to use
> the native VMS VAX C compiler when using C to write VAXELN applications.
> 
> Simon.
> 
> -- 
> Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
> Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

It's been a long time. For some of the official DEC history, 
please consult the VAXELN SPDs over the years, and the 
relevant VAXELN documentation. 

With VAXELN, you run the host toolset on a VAX/VMS host, and the
generated system image on something that behaves like one of the
supported VAX boxes (or VAX system-on-module, e.g. rtVAX300, and
its VMEbus bigger brother, the KAV30). 

As time went by, more languages were added, either officially or
unofficially. VAX C was probably first, Ada was obviously important 
to some customers, some Fortran stuff of the time worked too. Refer
to SPD for more info. EDEBUG didn't understand these things so the
regular VAX/VMS debugger (as shipped with VMS V4 onward?) was used 
instead, but in host/target style.

A regular contributor here may (or may not ;)) wish to comment on 
whether proper VMS PASCAL (quite distinct from EPASCAL) worked or 
was supported in the VAXELN environment.

If you'd asked around 25 years ago you could have had a better
answer but you might have needed a support contract or a sales
rep with a clue.

My recollection is that when DEC's Embedded+RealTime group got
Palmerised shortly before the turn of the century (ie sold off) 
VAXELN software went with it, so I was a bit surprised a few 
weeks ago when a reference was made (round here?) to VAXELN PAKs 
being included in the hobbyist PAKs. ICBW.