[Info-vax] VSI roadmap

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 8/21/2023 1:29 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2023-08-21, Chris Townley <news at cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 21/08/2023 13:23, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>> 2) If Synergex have decided not to port to x86-64 VMS (based on your
>>> comments) then it might mean they no longer have enough VMS users to
>>> justify the port.
>>>
>>> In that case, you are looking at moving your Dibol code over to another
>>> platform such as Linux. This is a problem that (for example) Ada users
>>> have had to deal with as there will not be an Ada compiler for x86-64 VMS.
>>
>> unless of course there comes an opensource port?
> 
> That will not happen. That simply will not happen.
> 
> Not only has the language been massively extended since the DEC days,
> the language itself is only one part of a Synergex toolkit, which
> includes, among other things, a GUI/character cell forms environment
> integrated into Synergex Dibol user source code that would also need
> to be duplicated.
> 
> IOW, this is no longer DEC ANSI DIBOL we are talking about.
> 
> Try to imagine the effort involved with implementing DEC Basic (or similar)
> on Linux and then imagine several times that amount of work. That's the
> amount of effort (at an absolute minimum) we are talking about here.
> 
> And this is based on my last knowledge of the language from a decade or
> so ago before I changed jobs. Goodness knows how much else has been added
> since then.

He seems to have been talking about Ada.   :-)

In theory the size of the project does not rule out an
open source implementation. Almost all the worlds
biggest development tool chains are fully or partly
open source.

The size and the fact that it is for VMS makes it
unrealistic though.

But there are a few potential alternative paths
forward for Dibol on VMS.

If VSI implemented .NET on VMS, then Dibol would become
available, because it supports .NET as platform.

If Synergex decided to support JVM as platform, then
Dibol would become available on VMS, because VSI
supports Java.

Arne