[Info-vax] CRTL and RMS vs SSIO

[Simon Clubley]

On 2021-10-07, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>
> Don't know how far work had progressed on alternate file systems.  Might 
> or might not help to make RMS "just another capability".  But, doing 
> what you suggest would go a long way toward making VMS more useful in 
> the future.
>
> I've got the suspicion that VMS clusters, while good, create some of the 
> problems in attempting to add new capabilities to VMS.  Need I mention 
> "MOUNT"?  Better segregation might help to add new and different 
> capabilities.  Not sure how easy that might be.
>

VMS clusters at conceptual level are not the problem. They offer
some very nice functionality that only recently is beginning to
appear elsewhere. They were literally a generation ahead of what
was available elsewhere when they were released.

The problem is how VMS was designed in those early days before
modular and layered computing really took off.

The VMS filesystem code, including MOUNT as you say, is a _horrible_
monolithic mass of closely interlinked code without any clear
boundaries between them that allow people (including end users) to
easily plug in new functionality and new filesystems.

The same is true for VMS CLIs BTW. DCL is tightly bound into VMS
in a horrible way it should not be. On Linux, both the command
shell and filesystem architectures are vastly cleaner and more
modular than they are on VMS.

However, if VMS had been designed in a later era, there would be
absolutely nothing stopping VMS having a cleaner internal architecture
_and_ also having world-leading cluster capabilities that are only
now just being equalled elsewhere.

IOW, it's not clustering that's the problem - it's the fact that
VMS wasn't implemented 5 to 10 years later than it was.

Simon.

-- 
Simon Clubley, clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.