[Info-vax] OpenVMS on X86-64, whats next

[Simon Clubley]

On 2022-07-20, Greg Tinkler <tinklerg at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fantastic to see a release of OpenVMS on X86-64, huge effort by a lot of people.
>
> My question is whats next?
>

Some will ask for it to be easier to get software created elsewhere
running on VMS.

Some will ask for it to be easier to get VMS to interact with the other
operating systems people are running these days.

Some will ask for a new VMS filesystem.

Some will ask for fork().

Some will ask for VMS on ARM.

Some will ask for security enhancements so VMS is brought up to the
security standards expected these days.

Some will ask for a decent version of DCL that has the standard features
you see elsewhere in shells like bash.

Some will say, sod all that, I've got my Macro-32 compiler.

Some will ask for a VMS desktop and a VMS native web browser.

Some will ask for a version of TECO for x86-64 VMS.

Many will ask for permanent production licences or some form of guaranteed
legal escrow to stop their companies going bust if VSI goes bust.

> There is a large list of things on the wish list, and interestingly as soon as the release announcement was made the first thing people mentioned was the 32 vs 64 confusion that exists.  
> This has been an ongoing point of contention for over 10 years, just look back at some of the older posts.  For me it has been ongoing for 30 years, this year.
>
> I had previously posted about not using SSIO, rather fixing CRTL.  I then
> wrote from sample 32bit code as a proof of concept.  This code has now been
> altered use RAB64, i.e. cc/point=64.  Well that was a whole heap of fun,
> and underlined for me as to the importance of OpenVMS becoming a PROPER 64
> bit OS.  It also made be realize that call RMS a record manage system is
> incorrect, it has 3 parts (read the doco) file handling, record management,
> RAW IO.  A much better name to avoid confusing the lx/Ux group is VMSIO.
>

At this point in time a pure 64-bit environment isn't going to happen.
Unfortunately. It would break way too much, and with not enough reward
for the effort involved.

BTW, calling RMS VMSIO would be confusing because of the QIO interface.

Simon.

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