[Info-vax] Looking to find a way to pull all the Open Source / Freeware folks together

[Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply]

In article <fKmdndE-Ya-BGV_XnZ2dnUVZ_jadnZ2d at earthlink.com>, "Bill
Pedersen" <pedersen at ccsscorp.com> writes: 

> Over the past few months I have been working on developing momentum within
> the OpenVMS Community.  As a part of this process I have decided the first
> item to look to accomplish is to get focus on Open Source and Freeware
> within the Community.

Some suggestions:

We need a one-stop shop.  Get the latest version of everything at one 
place.  Hunter Goatley's server has been a good source for years.  Most 
of our problems would be solved if everyone would use Hunter's server 
for the latest (stable, i.e. non-test, non-beta) version of a package.

Assuming, of course, that Hunter is willing to carry this burden.

Come up with a unified scheme for packaging and building.  I suggest ZIP
for packaging.  Some questions: should UNZIP then create a subdirectory
where the stuff goes, or should it be unpacked where the ZIP file is
(but, of course, perhaps with subdirectories)?  How should executables 
and object files be named to differentiate between architectures?  How 
is the package built?

Documentation: Best would be HELP files which can be inserted into a 
library for third-party products (i.e. not from HP and not from 
individual users for their non-shared stuff).  Is it too much to expect 
BOOKREADER documentation?

Reference: Should the user define symbols, logical names etc as 
described in the documentation, or should each package have procedures 
to be executed a) at startup and b) from SYS$SYLOGIN or wherever to set 
things up in a way which is guaranteed not to clash with anything else?