aps@decwrl.dec.com (Armando P. Stettner) (11/02/88)
Hi. It has been a long long time since I have submitted news. But here goes... Joeseph Yao's (jsdy@hadron) news message is almost completely in error. Joe's news item incorporates a news item from Chet Ramey containing what appears to be lines from Digital Review. The DR article states that VMS is OSF complient. I see nothing wrong with this statement. What is ment is that of the interfaces that have been `defined' by the OSF to make up their Level 0 Specification, VMS complies; it has products that implement all of these interfaces. It does. One should note that an Open System does not necessarily imply UNIX (UNIX is not a necessary condition for an OPEN system). Enough said. As to the portability of VMS itself, there is no requirement that the base implementation be portable. VMS, itself is not really portable; the `peculiar mixture of Bliss and VAX assembly language' does not help, either. Joeseph Yao's assertion that Ultrix 3.0 is just the same as VMS and/or requires the use fo compilers that are maintained on VMS is simply wrong. No ifs, ands, or buts. Nothing in the Ultrix Operating System product from Digital is dependent upon compilers maintained on VMS. (Of course, things like the VAX C compiler are maintained on VMS and probably requires a VMS system to maintain it. But this is ok. The `portable C compiler' which most UNIX people have grown to love (or hate) continues to be maintained and supported in the Ultrix product.) In short, Ultrix does not require VMS language processors for its own maintainence; as with any UNIX system, it requires only its own environment to support itself. aps.