Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Chris Townley Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Re: Bootcamp Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2025 17:47:04 +0100 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 70 Message-ID: <1046c69$552f$1@dont-email.me> References: <100jfjh$2l94e$1@dont-email.me> <1020odr$2t5n5$1@dont-email.me> <1041t4b$349i3$4@dont-email.me> <1044fhf$3p5ha$5@dont-email.me> <10465mq$62th$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Thu, 03 Jul 2025 18:47:05 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="257a80e60b727755c57c12a1b9de2ea5"; logging-data="169039"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+YbcrCbrg9mYOSqK6jJHjoDFVYOxPIfIk=" User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird Cancel-Lock: sha1:rkv4IL/p/lBDk8Ind1SFev7zYVY= Content-Language: en-GB In-Reply-To: On 03/07/2025 17:33, bill wrote: > On 7/3/2025 10:56 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote: >> On 7/2/2025 7:32 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote: >>> On Wed, 2 Jul 2025 14:01:46 +0200, gcalliet wrote: >>>> Le 02/07/2025 à 02:05, Lawrence D'Oliveiro a écrit : >>>>> I would say their market is a fraction of what it would have been if >>>>> they had been ready with an x86 port say, five years earlier. >>>>> >>>> Of course. >>>> >>>> But also VSI didn't really address the ecosystem as the complex set it >>>> is, with totally different needs and paces of evolution. >>> >>> Essentially all the (remaining) customers were waiting to move to x86, >>> because all the existing platforms that VMS ran on were dead-ends 10 >>> years >>> ago. The only strategy left to VSI was “run as fast as possible”. >>> >>> We discussed this sort of thing in this group a few years ago. The >>> obvious >>> way it seemed to me to get to a shipping product as quickly as possible >>> was to re-implement VMS as an emulation layer on top of a Linux kernel. >>> Chuck away all the internals of the super/exec/kernel-mode legacy >>> baggage: >>> keep just the userland APIs and DCL. Hardly anybody would care about >>> anything else. >> >> You keep pushing that idea. >> >> But: >> 1) Third party user mode emulations has existed for decades, but >>     there is still demand for VMS, so the hypothesis that >>     "Hardly anybody would care about anything else" does not >>     match with the real world. >> 2) The assumption that it would be easier to rewrite user mode >>     stuff to use Linux kernel than rewrite VMS kernel to support >>     x86-64 has been rejected by everyone that has spoken on the >>     topic *and* has actually worked on VMS. >> 3) The kernel is only a part of the project - an important part >>     but still just a part. Another huge part has been the compilers. >>     Getting Fortran, Pascal, Cobol and Basic compilers that >>     accept all the traditional VMS extensions so existing code >>     continues to compile has been a huge effort. >> 4) As with any software project writing the code is just a >>     part of the project. On top of that comes planning, >>     project management, testing, documentation etc.. The number >>     of hours for does not depend much on the technical implementation. >> 5) The idea of emulating one OS on another OS is questionable >>     in itself. It is not that difficult to achieve 90-95% >>     compatibility. But 100% compatibility is very hard. Because >>     the core OS design tend to spill over into >>     userland semantics. It is always tricky to emulate *nix >>     on VMS and it would be be tricky to emulate VMS on *nix. >>     Getting DCL, image activation, process permanent files, >>     subprocesses, logicals and symbols working 100% compatible >>     on a Linux kernel would not be easy. A lot hang on the >>     4 mode design and DCL being in S. >> > > Please stop feeding the troll.  He is going to continue to insist > that the only survival for VMS is to become another Linux distribution. > You can't win.  Starve it and let it die. > > bill > +1 -- Chris