[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-07-23 18:18:40 +0000, Bob Wilson said:

> V7.2-2 (TUTU, don't ask),

Because 2-2. Duh.  Culprit, here. Some folks were waffling on a naming 
decison and delaying checkins, so I named the release and opened the 
checkins. And the name stuck. Don't ask about the stuffed Penguin. In a 
tu-tu.

>  V7.2-6C1 (COE) ad V7.2-6C2 (COECERT) were all Alpha-only releases
> 
> V7.3 was for both VAX and Alpha and named KESTREL
> V7.3-1 (RUBY) and V7.3-2 (OPAL) were Alpha-only releases
> 
> n7.4 it get's a little muddy...we cut streams named KESTREL_PLUS and 
> EMERALD_FTn in the same era and without spending a lot of time 
> comparing the times of the base level files [that were checked when the 
>  builds for these releases were launched] it's difficult to determine 
> exactly what happened. In any case, for VAX there were 16 EMERALD_FT1 
> builds (the last one in Oct 2003), for Alpha there were 9 EMERALD_FT1 
> builds (the last one in Nov 2001).

There was active debate around whether to ship the then-next OpenVMS 
VAX release OpenVMS VAX V6.3 or OpenVMS VAX V7.0, and there were 
similar debates around the then-next OpenVMS Alpha release as OpenVMS 
Alpha V7.4 or OpenVMS Alpha V8.2. This as the changes with VAX and 
later with Alpha were minor.  In both cases, the decision was made to 
use the same number as the larger "paired" release on the newer 
platform, as explaining the lack-of-difference-but-still works-together 
was viewed as being more involved and more confusing and more effort 
than would shipping OpenVMS VAX V7.0 and OpenVMS Alpha V8.2 and each 
with comparatively fewer differences and the same version number as 
compared with the then-newer platform.

> The VAX and Alpha build and check-in domains were totally separate, an 
> artifact of the way that the Alpha software development team was broken 
> off of the "classic VMS" team. By (before?) V6.2 it became obvious that 
> this was not an optimal situation and the groups were joined...but, by 
> then the Alpha development cluster and the VAX development cluster were 
> completely different physically, but had the same software development 
> setup (e.g. the master packs on both had the same volume labels and the 
> build procedures, though different on VAX than on Alpha, referred to 
> them using the same logical names -- i.e. there were namespace issues 
> that prevented the two environments from residing on the same 
> cluster...so, when VMS development was off-shored and I made a copy of 
> the VAX masterpack I had to change the volume label and give it a 
> different logical name, and why I didn't even attempt to move the VDE 
> stuff from STAR (VAX development cluster) to EVMS (Alpha development 
> cluster)...I figured that the source code would be good enough :-)).
> 
> Apologies for the length and pedantic nature of this stuff :-) (context 
> is everything)

Mako V8.0, Jaws V8.1, Topaz V8.2, Dory V8.2-1, Nemo V8.3, Orion 
V8.3-1H1, Jedi V8.4.

I stashed a copy of the official published HPE OpenVMS Release History 
timeline before it was vaporized, if that's of interest.



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