[Info-vax] Logging systartup_vms.com progress to operator.log VMS 7.3-2

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2020-10-16 22:03:15 +0000, Dave Froble said:

> On 10/16/2020 4:56 PM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>> Apps requiring startups are a subset of apps installed, and something 
>> any new package manager will be expected to provide.
> 
> Well, I don't have any idea what a package manager is.  Maybe it's 
> semantics?  My apps do have background functions that are normally 
> started shortly after VMS starts, and that is triggered by the VMS 
> startup.

PCSI and VMSINSTAL are the two package managers encountered on OpenVMS. 
PCSI is an old package manager, and with its share of issues and 
limits.  VMSINSTAL... suffers from its own flexibility.

>> Well more than zero and somewhat less than all apps installed will have 
>> an associated startup procedure, and various of those will also have a 
>> shutdown procedure.
> 
> Yep, startup and shutdown, and messaging to manage the detached 
> functions.  Been doing that for over 30 years.  Got to wonder why it's 
> an issue now.

Tools increasingly automate common and error-prone tasks.

On other systems, it's quite rare to have to manage startups.

For app developers, many will automate their own deployments. That 
might be DCL, or it might be using a package manager such as PCSI. Past 
a handful of deployments, a package manager is usually preferable to a 
manual process.


>> Efforts to extend both VMSINSTAL and PCSI to transparently manage app 
>> startups failed.
> 
> Would not want anything not part of the apps to have anything to do 
> with the apps.

The startups are part of the apps.

>> I doubt that any package manager design will involve automated editing 
>> within a DCL command procedure that is also human-edited.
> 
> Would not do such.  Too much hands-on.  Much better to have messaging 
> to manage things.

I'd disagree. Much prefer automated deployments. Far more reproducible results.

-- 
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