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

[Joerg Schilling]

In article <BMudnSy2VOTtZ3TXnZ2dnUVZ_uNi4p2d at giganews.com>,
Richard B. Gilbert <rgilbert88 at comcast.net> wrote:

>> BTW: why did people create GNU make and GNU tar although smake and star
>> did exist before?
>> 
>
>Perhaps people wanted to use identical tools across several hardware 
>and/or software platforms.

If GNU make did run correctly on all the platforms it claims portability to,
I whould have given up smake around y2000. I continue to support smake because
it runs correctly on more platform than GNU make and because it is easier to
maintain. Just a note: I made a bugreport against GNU make in 1998 and received
a reply that I reported a serious bug. I did even allow the GNU make maintainers
to use the correctly working algorithm I wrote for smake - the bugs is still
present in GNU make.

Star offers roughly twice as many features than GNU tar and it is easier to 
port than GNU tar too. The only currently still unsupported by star platform I am 
aware of is VMS. There are still bugs in GNU tar that I reported in 1993...


Please note that I just tried to extract my sources using GNU tar and failed.
There have been thousands of messages like:

tar: schily-dist/ved/Makefile: Cannot utime: permission denied

and it did fail to extract e.g. autoconf/xconfig.h.in without giving even a
warning message at the end of the tar run.

I am now running "vmstar" and do not get warnings and voila:

-rwx------   1 SCHILLIN 392           800 May  1  2009 rules.cnf_in
-rwx------   1 SCHILLIN 392         43303 Oct 25 17:40 xconfig.h_in

The missing files have been unpacked.

configure still seems to be a problem, but a first compile of the boostrap smake
could be done:

./smake -r -p -f /dev/null
# Implicit Pattern Rules:
# Implicit Suffix Rules:
# Simple Suffix Rules:
# Macro definitions:
$  =    $ 
HOME  = /disk_user/decuserve_user/schilling 
HOSTTYPE  =     alpha 
MAKE  = DISK_USER:[DECUSERVE_USER.SCHILLING.SCHILY-DIST.PSMAKE]/./smake 
MAKEFLAGS  =    -pr 
MAKE_FLAGS  =   -pr 
MAKE_HOST  =    Eisner.Encompasserve.org 
MAKE_LEVEL  =   1 
MAKE_NAME  =    smake 
MAKE_OS  =      unknown 
MAKE_SHELL_FLAG  =      -ce 
MAKE_SHELL_IFLAG  =     -c 
MAKE_VERSION  = 1.2a45 
OSTYPE  =       VMS 
PATH  = /bin:/gnu/bin:/GNU/BIN:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:. 
SHELL  =        /bin/sh 
SHLVL  =        1 
TERM  = vt100-80 
USER  = SCHILLING 
_  =    ./smake 
# Various other definitions:

I need to work on using "sh" instead of /bin/sh and I ned to find a way
to call commands via bash(1) instead of system(3).

-- 
EMail:joerg at schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
      js at cs.tu-berlin.de		(uni)  
      joerg.schilling at fokus.fraunhofer.de (work) Blog: http://schily.blogspot.com/
URL:  http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/ ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/schily