[Info-vax] Hard links on VMS ODS5 disks

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 7/24/2023 8:33 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> 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. :)

> 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.

We were discussing what was causing the relative long time to
get VMS x86-64 out the door.

You suggested that it was due to Macro-32.

VSI said that was not the case. They should know.

And it seems very unlikely that Macro-32 should be the
reason:
- even when it is one sneaky compiler then it it is just one
   compiler out of many
- the compiler had to be done anyway due to customers
   also using Macro-32 and they expect something working
- the porting strategy seems to be that new functionality
   and functionality that has to rewritten is done in C while
   Macro-32 code is getting compiled with the new compiler

Arne