[Info-vax] MariaDB/MySQL on x86

[Neil Rieck]

On Saturday, April 29, 2023 at 8:57:50 AM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 4/29/2023 7:47 AM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> > On Thursday, April 27, 2023 at 7:48:03 PM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote: 
> >> On 4/27/2023 6:36 AM, Neil Rieck wrote: 
> >>> As I have mentioned before, 99% of all software (applications as 
> >>> well as software development tools) is written in C/C++ so not 
> >>> supporting C/C++ is one way to kill any platform. 
> >> I don't believe those 99%. 
> >> 
> >> Most surveys of programming languages show: 
> >> 
> >> tier 1 - JavaScript, Python, Java tier 2 - C/C++, C#, PHP tier 3 & 
> >> 4 - all the rest
> > Sir, I think you misunderstood my post.
> I misunderstand things all the time. 
> 
> :-)
> > All those languages 
> > (including Javascript, Python, Java along with COBOL, FORTRAN and 
> > BASIC and anything else you can think of) are now implemented in 
> > either C or C++ ( https://www.stroustrup.com/applications.html ) 
> > 
> > Back in the day, all software (both tools and applications) would 
> > have been implemented in macro assembler but now everything is 
> > implemented in C or C++ then a code generator takes care of the final 
> > step; portable software would be virtually impossible if this wasn't 
> > the case. This is what Bell Labs had in mind when they were thinking 
> > about porting UNIX from an 18-bit PDP-7 to a 16-bit PDP-11 in the 
> > early 1970s. This magic trick was quickly repeated on an Interdata 
> > Model 70 then VAX-11.
> C and C++ are widely used on in the infrastructure of other languages. 
> 
> The compilers themselves can easily be written in another language 
> and sometimes do so. 
> 
> But the RTL is different. If one need to write a RTL that interfaces 
> the OS and want to support many OS'es, then the list of possible 
> languages becomes pretty short. And C and C++ are at the top of the 
> list.
> > Anyone who has ever worked with Python knows it can be implemented 
> > with other languages (including Python) but the CPYTHON virtual 
> > machine is the most popular and it is implemented in C.
> I don't think there are any implementation without a C dependency at 
> the lower level. 
> 
> Jython & GraalPython run in JVM, IronPython run in CLR and PyPy 
> is written in (Restricted) Python, but both JVM and CLR has 
> an interface to the OS written in C or C++ somewhere at the 
> lowest level. And I am pretty sure that it is the same for PyPy.
> > But it looks like Python has followed the example set by the 
> > developers of MySQL-6 and MariaDB-10 in that Python-3.11 can only be 
> > built using a C11 compiler.
> I did not know, but not so surprising. At some point projects 
> move on. Python had to choose between C99 that is now 24 years 
> old and C11 that is 12 years old and decided and now they 
> made the jump. It is not exactly chasing latest and greatest.
> > Now many people do not use Python-3 or MariaDB-10, but I use both 
> > everyday. And although I'm a fan of OpenVMS (while my employer 
> > remains agnostic), a decision by VSI to not support C11 would force a 
> > negative decision many like me.
> C11 on VMS x86-64 should not be a problem with clang. 
> 
> But it seems unlikely that VSI will invest in going to C11 
> on Alpha and Itanium.
> > comment: I am currently attending a Udemy course on "machine 
> > learning". It appears that Python-3 is the only game in town for work 
> > in this area (TensorFlow, scikit-learn, and PyTorch are just three of 
> > many python add-on libraries).
> Python is a very important language today. 
> 
> Arne

I'm glad you added that clarification.
I think Alpha is totally off the table but I think a case could be made for providing modern compiler support to OpenVMS on Itanium.
This would enable people like Mark Berryman, Brett Cameron and others to more easily port open software products to the OpenVMS ecosystem.
This is a must on x86-64 since open source software appears to be ever more important today than it ever was.

Back to python for a moment. I've got a lot of production stuff running under python-3.6 (which is no longer supported) so we are preparing to move to python-3.9
Not sure about OpenVMS systems but Linux systems allow you to support multiple python environments simultaneously via the shebang mechanism.
Anyway, I've been playing a lot with python-3.9 lately an have noticed that many modern python libraries are installed via something called the whl mechanism. Watching this happen is like watching a professional magician: c or c++ source code is downloaded, then compiled + linked (provided you have installed development tools like gcc).

Neil Rieck
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
http://neilrieck.net