[Info-vax] report of the last "rendez-vous autour de VMS" (2-FEB-2024)

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/19/2024 8:17 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> On Fri, 19 Apr 2024 19:53:41 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 4/19/2024 6:13 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
>>> On Fri, 19 Apr 2024 10:01:17 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> The bad thing is that some of this can be tricky if the desired
>>>> functionality is based on *nix system design and does not really fit
>>>> well with VMS system design.
>>>
>>> The reality is that *nix (particularly Linux) has become the de-facto
>>> standard for an OS layer. Even Microsoft has been forced to accept
>>> this, hence the introduction of WSL.
>>>
>>> Could VSI come up with a WSL equivalent?
>>
>> MS invented WSL to allow developers to build and test Linux applications
>> on Windows.
> 
> Why did they need to? It was because developers are developing Linux
> applications in preference to Windows ones, and this was a last-ditch
> attempt to keep at least some of that business on Windows.

There are a lot of those.

But there are also another large group: those that develop for
both Linux and Windows.

>> VSI has no interest in trying to make developers build and test Linux
>> applications their code on VMS.
> 
> But you have all this code that already runs on Linux and other *nix, that
> you would like to have on VMS, don’t you? You yourself said above, about
> how “the desired functionality is based on *nix system design and does not
> really fit well with VMS system design”. What else are you supposed to do
> if you want that code on VMS?

It is not a big secret that there are a lot more code running on
Linux than on VMS.

But remember that WSL 2 is just a VM with some fancy integration stuff
to make development smooth. The Linux applications just runs in a
Linux VM.

I am sure that a lot of VMS customers will have Linux VM's around
running Linux applications. But that has little to do with VMS and
VSI.

What is relevant for VSI and VMS is porting those applications to
run on VMS.

In some cases that will require changes to VMS and C RTL.

And it is not always easy because VMS and Linux are different.

Arne