te@rhi.hi.is (Tryggvi Edwald) (04/11/89)
I work for a small company that has written a large (or, at least, complicated)
Fortran/VMS application program (a Telex/Fax system) for the DEC VAX. There
has been considerable interest in porting this program suite to a wider audi-
ence, HP-UX environment in particular. The presence of a large number of
lib$- and sys$- things and such from the VMS, plus some really perverse
machine dependencies in the code, that port will prove really difficult (when
will people learn to use standard coding techniques?). Recently I heard about
the Port/VX utility (perhaps the name is misspelled), designed as a "Vax-
killer", that makes it easier to do precisely what we need.
I would be most interested in learning more about this utility, its availabili-
ty, cost of use, and if there is enough experience around, some evaluation of
the usefulness of this program. Does it really work?
Sincere thanks to anyone that cares to comment.
Tryggvi Edwald, Vistfang hf. Skeifan 17, 108 Reykjavik Iceland
Telephone +354-1-687230
Fax +354-1-82702
email te@rhi.hi.isgentry@kcdev.UUCP (Art Gentry) (04/12/89)
In article <852@krafla.rhi.hi.is>, te@rhi.hi.is (Tryggvi Edwald) writes: > [verbage deleted] > [wanting to know about PORT-VAX While I have no experience with the VAX port utilities, I do have extensive experience with PORT-UX, which is the package for porting HP1000 code to HP-UX. If they did as good a job with the VAX package as they did with the HP1000 package, you should have few problems. The biggest problem we had, and realisticly we caused it ourselves, was the lack of emulation of several system calls. Like most things in life, they (HP) did an admirable job of writing emulation routines for most of the HP1000 calls, but not all. And of course, had we written more portable code, we would not have run across this problem. We have since moved all of our code to native mode UNIX and found the PORT package a great intermidiate step. Art Gentry standard disclaimer - opinions my own, etc....
markbes@hpsemc.HP.COM (Mark Beswetherick) (04/21/89)
The Port/VX product is a set of tools to help migrate VMS Fortran applications to HP-UX. It currently works only on the Series 800 (HP Precision Architecture), not the Series 300 (680x0 based). Port/VX was introduced in January, 1989, in the U.S. I am not sure what its availability is in Iceland - your local HP sales people can tell you. The components of the product are: o Fortran Code Anaylzer (FCA) - scans Fortran source code and flags both Fortran incompatibilities and VMS run-time calls, and indicates whether the incompatibilities are dealt with automatically by the other tools or must be handled manually. o Fortran Code Translator (FCT) - converts VMS Fortran extensions to syntax acceptable to HP-UX Fortran. (note also that many of VMS Fortran extensions are already part of HP-UX Fortran - FCT just deals with the VMS'isms not yet in the compiler). o Migration library - emulates some of the commonly used VMS run-time calls. Of the 600+ VMS run-time calls, we currently emulate a little over 100, but we tried to pick the most commonly used ones. o File transfer utility - allows you to read VMS BACKUP tapes onto HP-UX. o Data translator - converts VMS floating point data, reorders bytes, and handles some Fortran record types. o Consulting - 5 days of consulting from an HP systems engineer is bundled as part of the product. The consulting is an important part of the product. Migration can be potentially difficult, especially between VMS and HP-UX, where there are many language, O/S and architecture differences. The consulting can help determine whether it makes sense to use the tools or whether there are so many issues that you are facing a total rewrite. You mention that there are lots of nasty machine dependencies in the code - Port/VX probably won't help you with these. Also you mention lots of runtime library calls (sys$, lib$). We do emulate some of these, but certainly not all. Also, if performance of the run-time libraries is critical, be aware that some of the emulations are slower than on VMS, as they are implemented at the user level, not kernel level. But, Port/VX has helped a number of customers. It is especially effective for handling the Fortran conversion parts, which can be really time-consuming if done manually.
burzio@mmlai.UUCP (Tony Burzio) (04/22/89)
In article <1250032@hpsemc.HP.COM>, markbes@hpsemc.HP.COM (Mark Beswetherick) writes: > o Fortran Code Translator (FCT) - converts VMS Fortran extensions > to syntax acceptable to HP-UX Fortran. (note also that many of > VMS Fortran extensions are already part of HP-UX Fortran - FCT > just deals with the VMS'isms not yet in the compiler). Does anybody know if HP plans to add the structure/record data types from DEC FORTRAN? Many of our programs use this, slowing the porting of code down. In addition, several of my users have complained that FORTRAN does not give a nice stack dump when aborting, like the VAX does, showing subroutine and line number information. They just don't think a core dump is very useful, and I must agree. Any chances of these being put in? I still maintain that the major hinderance to unplugging DEC machines and putting in HPs is the lack of support for LAT (DEC) terminal servers and DECnet... ********************************************************************* Tony Burzio * I want my twm! Martin Marietta Labs * mmlai!burzio@uunet.uu.net * *********************************************************************
mike@hpfcdc.HP.COM (Mike McNelly) (04/24/89)
> Does anybody know if HP plans to add the structure/record data types > from DEC FORTRAN? Many of our programs use this, slowing the porting > of code down. In addition, several of my users have complained that > FORTRAN does not give a nice stack dump when aborting, like the VAX > does, showing subroutine and line number information. They just don't > think a core dump is very useful, and I must agree. Any chances of these > being put in? Structure/data types are available on Series 300 FORTRAN as of the 6.5 release. They will be available on Series 800 FORTRAN on the 7.0 release. You might check the HP-UX Portability Guide for HP 9000 Series 300/800 Computers (HP Part number 98794-90046). It has a chapter devoted to FORTRAN compatibility between VMS FORTRAN and HP-UX machines. Mike McNelly mike%hpfcla@hplabs.hp.com