Re: rehost

[kilgallen@eisner.decus.org (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <7didjo$n35$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, robert_dewar@my-dejanews.com writes:
> In article <36FC4AE3.64EB@yahoo.com>,
>   Brad JungleT <bht_jungle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Looking for existing tools that can be useful
>> to rehost Ada 83 programs
>> from Dec/Vax to UNIX systems. SUN/Solaris, DEC/ALPHA UNIX
>> primary targets.
> 
> One thing that is useful in GNAT is that to the maximum
> extent practical, all DEC attributes and pragmas are
> implemented on all DEC targets. This can be quite helpful
> if your program makes extensive use of these special
> DEC features. Similarly, there is an implementation of
> all the DEC extensions to System.
> 
> Of course a lot depends on how much you have used VMS
> specific stuff from Starlet. The less the better for this
> kind of porting effort.

It may be foolish to claim Robert Dewar had additional meaning
beyond what he stated, but here goes...

The consideration Robert raises applies also to packages that
are VMS-specific but do not happen to have Starlet in the name.
Some of them can be readily synthesized (STR) but others are
more difficult (INDEXED_IO has all of RMS behind it as body).

The tough ones are bindings to pieces of VMS that are not
at all Ada-specific, but there is little support in the 3rd
party non-Ada tools marketplace for porting such programs.
That market seems to concentrate on the porting of _programmers_
to non-VMS environments, by providing DCL-like shells, TPU-like
editors etc.  This is much like what I see coming _into_ VMS;
there is a tendency to pick the easy projects rather than
the tough ones.

Larry Kilgallen