[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-07-19, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 7/19/2023 1:32 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>> On 2023-07-19, Dave Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>>> On 7/18/2023 10:01 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 7/18/2023 9:25 PM, Dave Froble wrote:
>>>>> Do you also claim that the executable code would also be smaller?
>>>>
>>>> No.
>>>
>>> Then, what would be the benefit?
>> 
>> For one thing, if you didn't have to worry about the Macro-32 and
>> Bliss crap, the VMS port would have been completed years ago.
>
> Are you sure?
>
> It is not my impression that the various VMS ISA migrations has
> caused rewrite of lots of Macro-32 and Bliss.
>
> My impression is that:
> - they create the Macro-32 and Bliss compilers for the new platform
> - they compile the old Macro-32 and Bliss code dating back from the
>    70's and 80's
> - the new code get written in C (plus a little bit of native
>    assembler where needed)
>

You have missed what I am saying above, so I may have been too subtle.
Let me reword it: If VMS didn't have any Macro-32 or Bliss code in it,
and didn't need to support them as application level programming languages,
VMS would look much more internally like any another OS written in C does,
and the port would have been completed years ago.

As of this month, the VMS port has been going on for 9 years and it is
still not finished.

It doesn't take 9 years to port Linux to a brand-new architecture, even
if you first have to implement the compilers for that brand-new architecture.

Simon.

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