[Info-vax] Meditech in the news

[Sam Weiner]

In article <61e59077$0$699$14726298 at news.sunsite.dk>,
Arne Vajhøj  <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>On 1/17/2022 7:55 AM, George Cornelius wrote:
>> Arne Vajh?j <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>> On 1/6/2022 3:01 PM, Arne Vajh?j wrote:
>>>> On 1/6/2022 10:46 AM, Arne Vajh?j wrote:
>>>>> One may not like MUMPS and its variants.
>>>>
>>>> For those with an strong desire to try MUMPS aka M on VMS, then:
>>>>
>>>> https://sourceforge.net/projects/fis-gtm/files/GT.M-Alpha-OpenVMS/V6.2-001/
>>>>
>>>> should be a VMS Alpha build of GT.M version 6.2 (no VMS version of
>>>> 6.3 or 7.0).
>>>>
>>>> I have not tried it myself.
>>>
>>> Now I have. Hello world works.
>>>
>>> $ type test.m
>>> hello()
>>>    write "Hello world from Mumps!",!
>>>    quit
>>> $ mumps test
>>> $ link test
>>> $ r test
>>> Hello world from Mumps!
>> 
>> Congratulations!
>> 
>> Though Greystone ran here for a number of years on AIX, I never
>> bothered to ask for access to it, nor did I try to install it
>> under VMS.
>> 
>> Would be curious as to what the compiled code looks like, though.
>> 
>> Greystone was unusual in that it generated object code. I suspect
>> it was a lot of calls to subroutines. Or a bit of setup code followed
>> by invoking an interpreter for, say, stack-machine code.
>> 
>> If the latter, not sure why it would be necessary to have separate
>> compilation - other environments just perform a hidden precompile -
>> except that, if the language had the capability to call external
>> routines, you could link those routines directly in with the compiled
>> Mumps code and not have to have a special shared library of
>> globally defined external routines [*],[**].
>
>Separate compile and link is the VMS way ...
>
>I don't know how the compiled code looks like.
>
>It supports /LIST but not /LIST/MACH (well it accept the
>/MACH but does not produce anything).

[smw] The machine list feature requires a debug build.

[smw] The object code is largely, though not completely, calls into the
runtime C code.

[smw] You don't need to precompile the source to the M routines and
"MUMPS /DIRECT" will get a prompt at which you can type M commands.
"DO ^routine" will compile routine.m if needed and execute it.

[smw] The Programmer's Guide which should be on sf.net is pretty good.

Sam

>Do we have a disassembler for VMS Alpha?
>
>(never used one since DISM32 that was VMS VAX)
>
>Arne