[Info-vax] VAX VMS going forward

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-07-27 22:49:42 +0000, David Goodwin said:

> Reduce maintenance costs of course. Why maintain an X server, Motif and 
> CDE ports in parallel to the open-source community? That's just 
> unnecessary duplication of work for no real benefit. Using 
> off-the-shelf bits doesn't mean it can't be shipped with VMS.

You'd then have to port existing app code away from the 
descriptor-based APIs within DECwindows, or retrofit those 
descriptor-based APIs into the open-source upstream, and probably also 
port the existing app code forward to newer X.

There are hunks to retrofit, as DEC did have one or two X libraries 
that were handy too, but that were never open-sourced.

Among other wrinkles.

Then there's writing new graphics device drivers, which AFAIK is 
completely undocumented and unsupported, and requires source access.

Feasible? Sure. Small project? Nope.

> But if few people use DECwindows then perhaps the more likely situation 
> is these bits simply aren't maintained aside from ensuring they still 
> run as well as they did 20 years ago.

DECwindows on OpenVMS hasn't seen X updates or new graphics device 
support in at least a dozen years. Probably close to twenty years. So 
you'd be porting the libraries and/or the X apps forward or backward, 
too.

VSI has been quite clear that new OpenVMS work is for servers. Intel 
IGP and a DECwindows baseline port likely fulfills the developers' 
needs, and that's likely as far as any client OpenVMS support goes.


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