[Info-vax] Looking into C-include files on VMS

[JF Mezei]

Joerg Schilling wrote:

> OpenVMS XXX 0 V7.2 VAX_7000-720 VAX
> 
> First a question: is this the same as a HP 9000/720?

No. VAX is a totally dfferent platform that was replaced by Alpha in the
early 1990s, and stopped being sold a few years later (towards end of
1990s).

The last version of VMS for VAX is 7.3 and does not have support for
modern filenames, this was added only to the Alpha version of VMS.

> -	The filesystem only supports one dot "." in filenames which would
> 	require modifications in "configure"

The Alpha VMS systems support modern filenames with the ODS5 file system
(VAX is at ODS2), but even with ODS5,  modern filenames are not fully
transparent as some utilities will show escaped characters (such as
multiuple dots or spaces in filenames).


> -	cc always exits with exit code 0 even in case of errors. This
> 	causes many configure tests to fail

You need to check the symbol $STATUS after the CC command.

> -	OpenVMS 7.0 should support a POSIX compliant struct stat.st_ino
> 	but I cannot make this work.

7.2 is more than 10 years old.

> 	**********************
> -	I cannot see the ful content of the system include files.
> 	Could someone help me with hints on how to do this?



On some installations, there are pre-extracted .H files.

dir/nohead disk:[vms$common...]stdio.h
would tell you where they have been extracted to.

Otherwise:

lib/extract=stdio sys$library:decc$rtldef.tlb

You can find other includes in sys$library:SYS$STARLET_C.TLB  (contains
more system related includes).


HELP LIB will give you various options of the library command.


> 
> 
> I am currntly trying to compile "smake" and use a static hand made 
> configuration that was created by Mr. Heuser but I need to find a way to
> run commands via bash. What is the best way to do this? THere seems to be no
> fork() but vfork(). Will vfork()/exec() work?
>