[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Simon Clubley]

On 2023-07-22, Arne Vajhøj <arne at vajhoej.dk> wrote:
> On 7/22/2023 4:57 PM, John Reagan wrote:
>> On Saturday, July 22, 2023 at 10:26:27?AM UTC-4, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 7/20/2023 8:49 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> I get the impression that you have had to spend a lot of effort to
>>>> duplicate low-level behaviour in a way that simply isn't a concern
>>>> with other operating systems due to the need, especially, to support
>>>> Macro-32 and ensure that code written at this low-level, and which
>>>> uses the various idioms as a result, continues to work.
>>> I believe Macro-32 is a relative simple compiler. And when they got
>>> that then they can compile the existing Macro-32 code.
>>>
>> Well, I just spit my wine out reading that.
>> 
>> Simple?  Try to deal with condition codes.  Try to deal with routines
>> that jump between each other.  Try to make the stack "look like a VAX"
>> on platforms that say otherwise. :)
>
> OK. I was wrong. Happens all the time. :-)
>

And _this_ Arne, is exactly why I keep saying the kinds of things I do.

VSI are having to expend serious engineering effort on trying to
duplicate the behaviour of an assembly language (with all its built-in
idioms) on a completely different architecture.

This is simply a non-issue on operating systems where the lowest
supported language is C instead of assembly language. The stuff John
is having to deal with is just an implementation detail in the backend
code generator on Linux and elsewhere that is hidden from the source code.

In Macro-32 however, it's directly visible in the source code and you have
to go to great efforts to duplicate that behaviour on other architectures.

On Linux, and other operating systems written in C or above, that's an
issue you simply don't have to worry about.

Simon.

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