[Info-vax] Userland programming languages on VMS.

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 1/31/22 19:48, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-01-31 18:39, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>> On 1/31/22 09:02, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> On 2022-01-31, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I would run Solaris on SPARC and I do run VMS on Alpha
>>>> and keep Linux on x86-64. Are there any benefits
>>>> from running Linux on a less common platform?
>>>>
>>>
>>> One of the reasons Linux has taken off is that you can run it on
>>> pretty much every single thing that is physically capable of hosting
>>> it in terms of CPU power and memory/other resources.
>>>
>>> This includes large mainframes all the way down to tiny embedded boards
>>> running on some custom hardware/architecture.
>>>
>>
>> The same is probably true of just about any OS.  All it takes is
>> access to the source and a desire by someone to do the work.  Why
>> do you think I would still like to see the source to RSTS released
>> into the wild.  RSX which was very PDP-11 specific now has a version
>> running on later Z80 family processors.  I have it running here at
>> my home and it works quite well.
> 
> The Z80 RSX implementation has pretty little to do with the PDP-11 RSX 
> sources. So I think it's pretty incorrect to claim you need the sources 
> of X to do some implementation giving similar functionality on different 
> hardware.

That's true, but it would make it a lot easier.  All you really need
is very good documentation of the internals (which is what I assume
the writer of RSX-120 used).  I have never seen even that for RSTS
or RT-11.

> 
> But you are right that it does require the desire to do the work. Linux 
> is an example of this. Linus wanted something Unix like, but couldn't 
> use the existing software, so he rewrote it based on the public APIs. 
> User applications compile and work fine (usually) on both Linux and 
> Unix, even though the internals sometimes are rather different.

Yeah, I never understood his reasoning.  The BSD lawsuit was well
known to be DOA and development of BSD never paused.  And then there
was MINIX with source published and even available on floppies.  I
still have both my disk sets as well as the book.

bill