[Info-vax] OpenVMS development tooling (was: Re: VSI strategy for OpenVMS)

[Lawrence D’Oliveiro]

On Thursday, September 30, 2021 at 6:03:00 AM UTC+13, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
>
> You're going to be re-inventing GUIDs on the path you're on. 

As a counterexample, consider that the DNS has nothing resembling GUIDs. Its whole point is to abstract away from numbers (which can change), and let people use names instead. That system is able to interoperate between millions, nay, billions of users and services worldwide.

> As soon as a user or a developer creates a traditional fixed name or a 
> traditional UIC/UID/GID value or the ever-popular fixed filenames for 
> log files or such, there are opportunities for collisions. 

There have been systems for allowing developers to come up with their own package names, in Java for example. They tend to implement a hierarchy with a remarkable resemblance to ... guess what ... the DNS.

Consider also that a Linux distro like Debian offers something like 50,000 packages for a user to install. Yet they manage to avoid filename collisions.