Is GNV a VSI or external project ?

[Simon Clubley]

Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.

VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.

I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
the base kit, but only for Itanium, and which is located at:

https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/

So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

I also wonder which architectures VSI will be releasing their new GNV
version for.

Thanks,

Simon.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Simon Clubley
Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.
VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.
I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/
So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

If you look at the installation link, then it points
to SourceForge, so it seems most likely that VSI takes
the SF code and make an official VSI version of that.

Which may make sense, if there are still VMS sites
around with a strict "only software from VMS owner
or well known commercial vendors like Oracle are
allowed on the VMS system" policy.

Arne

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.
VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.
I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/
So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

If you look at the installation link, then it points
to SourceForge, so it seems most likely that VSI takes
the SF code and make an official VSI version of that.

Interesting, but it doesn't explain why VSI are talking about creating
a new GNV version based on customer requests instead of just packaging
the SF version. I wonder if VSI are planning to fork the SF work.

Simon.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.
VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.
I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/
So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

If you look at the installation link, then it points
to SourceForge, so it seems most likely that VSI takes
the SF code and make an official VSI version of that.

Interesting, but it doesn't explain why VSI are talking about creating
a new GNV version based on customer requests instead of just packaging
the SF version. I wonder if VSI are planning to fork the SF work.

Maybe.

Or it is just an accumulation of sub project changes. That they have
been asked to include in the bundle.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnv/

says:

<quote>
For the most up to date version of GNV please download the base GNV kit
from the FILES section of this project.
...
Once you have GNV installed you MUST then download and install the
additional kits under FILES for the most up to date copies of the
utilities,
</quote>

which again may not fit well with all sites.

Interestingly same page says:

<quote>
As of February 2016 this was V3.0.1 and was available for both I64 and
AXP architectures. VSI has provided a version of GNV 3.0.2 which will
ONLY install on VSI OpenVMS.
</quote>

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

... if there are still VMS sites around with a strict
"only software from VMS owner or well known commercial vendors like
Oracle are allowed on the VMS system" policy.

I wonder how long customers with policies like that manage to stay in
business ...

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Lawrence D'Oliveiro

... if there are still VMS sites around with a strict
"only software from VMS owner or well known commercial vendors like
Oracle are allowed on the VMS system" policy.

I wonder how long customers with policies like that manage to stay in
business ...

Depends on whether someone send them a telefax to inform them
that they are behind.

:-)

It is an approach that was relative common 40 years ago,
but rather rare today.

Note though that unless you have some advanced security
mechanisms in place, then it may actually not be a bad
policy. There has been a lot of malware attacks in
recent years via reputable software repositories.

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Note though that unless you have some advanced security mechanisms in
place, then it may actually not be a bad policy. There has been a lot of
malware attacks in recent years via reputable software repositories.

But the policy was to only get that software from “reputable” sources. So
yes, since it doesn’t help much against such attacks, it is a bad policy.

[Dennis Boone]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Note though that unless you have some advanced security
mechanisms in place, then it may actually not be a bad
policy. There has been a lot of malware attacks in
recent years via reputable software repositories.

Including Microsoft.

https://www.osnews.com/story/1212/microsoft-accidentally-distributes-virus/

So, you know, nobody is immune.

De

[Craig A. Berry]

Post by Simon Clubley
Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.
VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.
I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/
So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

Both and neither. GNV originated within Compaq/HP(E) (possibly as part
of the COE project?) and the wrapper that more or less emulates the gcc
command line with DEC/Compaq/HP(E) C is still a pretty close cousin of
what those folks built. That is one example, but most other parts also
started with the vendor. Other people (mostly Eric Roberston, John
Malmberg, and Bill Pedersen) have taken individual pieces quite a bit
farther than anything that was coming out of HP. I'm hoping some of
those folks will chime in and correct/extend my comments.

At one point the advice was to avoid the complete installation because
what it did with the POSIX root could corrupt your system disk and you
didn't really need the POSIX root to run Unix utilities. I believe that
may have been fixed at some point. No one has released a complete
package with up-to-date components in many years. I have not seen any
new releases of individual pieces in several years either.

What the vendor has provided over the years has been a very mixed bag.
I saw a presentation while the engineering group was in India that had
a slide listing all of the new and updated components that were to be in
the next version of GNV. There were about 60-80 as I recall. But none
of those things ever appeared. Maybe the HP(E) lawyers read the GNU
license, or maybe someone (belatedly) did some quality control and
realized the stuff that had been "ported" was nowhere near ready to
ship. So prior efforts are not necessarily things to emulate.

VSI certainly needs a porting capability for code written elsewhere. I
have heard rumors of CMake for some years now but don't know the status.
Having updates to bash and GNU make and any utility likely to be used
in a configure script would be nice things to have. But the CRTL has
improved a lot in the last few years, with (finally) complete C99
support, etc., so probably none of the existing ports would look the way
they do if one were starting today.

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Craig A. Berry

Post by Simon Clubley
Just got an end of the year update from VSI, which was pretty routine
apart from one item.
VSI are talking about releasing a new version of GNV but I thought this
had long since become an external project hosted at SourceForge.
I checked the VSI website and they appear to have a single download of
https://vmssoftware.com/products/gnv/
So, is GNV a VSI or external project these days ?

Both and neither. GNV originated within Compaq/HP(E) (possibly as part
of the COE project?) and the wrapper that more or less emulates the gcc
command line with DEC/Compaq/HP(E) C is still a pretty close cousin of
what those folks built. That is one example, but most other parts also
started with the vendor. Other people (mostly Eric Roberston, John
Malmberg, and Bill Pedersen) have taken individual pieces quite a bit
farther than anything that was coming out of HP. I'm hoping some of
those folks will chime in and correct/extend my comments.

[snip]

Thanks for the detailed response Craig.

It will be interesting to see what changes VSI think are needed.

Post by Craig A. Berry
VSI certainly needs a porting capability for code written elsewhere. I
have heard rumors of CMake for some years now but don't know the status.

John Reagan is the best person to ask about that. It's been done as part
of moving to a modern LLVM.

Simon.