[Info-vax] VSI Python 3.8.2 port, with a OpenVMS Shark Logo...

[Craig A. Berry]

On 11/23/20 11:24 AM, Jean-François Piéronne wrote:
> Le 23/11/2020 à 17:27, Craig A. Berry a écrit :
> [snip]
> 
>>>>
>>>
>>> I do not see why an account to see the vmsgenerations content is an
>>> issue.
>>
>> I already explained that people who don't know it's there will never be
>> able to find it. It's also just another hoop to jump through when it's
>> easy enough to allow public access to a GitLab project:
>>
>> <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/public_access/public_access.html>
>>
> 
> Interesting complain, probably no access to any sources like VSI is
> doing make you much happy :-))
 >
> Also there is a link explore on the login page...

Thanks.  I would never have found that if you hadn't mentioned it here.
It was off the bottom of my laptop screen and I had to scroll to get to it.

I do appreciate all that you have made available, but a landing page
that tells me where I've landed would be helpful if it's possible.


>>> I find it more noteworthy that JFP has a Python 3.10 available for IA64
>>> since some time back (this summer) while the VSI version is currently on
>>> 3.9 or 3.8.6.
>>
>> JFP's work is exemplary but 3.10 is still in pre-release and really
>> should not be used in production.  VSI's release of 3.8.2 is pretty much
>> in line with what other vendors are doing, assuming they have even moved
>> to Python 3.
> 
> I have tough, but clearly that was a dream, that VSI will look at what
> customers are using... Instead they choose to work alone without any
> interest for what customers need. Some have big Python application on
> VMS, The VSI kit break a lot of thing and worse doesn't allow what they
> use/need. And yes as I have ported Python on VMS for more 15 (20?) years
> I know many of them...

That's disappointing.  I have not looked at the VSI kit and was hoping
they would have simply backported your changes to a currently-supported
release and produced a signed kit for those who have a "must be
supported by the vendor" requirement.

> I have explain why 3.10, for sure I can build a 3.8, probably 3.9 which
> is the latest version. But as VSI doesn't provide access to their port I
> doesn't like to do again a job already done, and I have had meeting with
> some current Python users on VMS, some are still using 2.5, one 2.3...
> So no hurry to go to 3.

Tracking the development stream is the right thing to do when porting
open source.  I don't know how they branch their release streams, but if
3.9.0 has more in common with 3.10 than with 3.8.x then it might not be
too hard to get 3.9.x working.  But, I agree, it's not worth it unless
someone has a specific need for it.