After 47 years, OpenVMS gets a package manager (VSP)

14 points by raymii

zie

They are only a few decades behind :) That’s practically on-time for a legacy OS focused on stability.

I don’t believe OS/360 has a package manager and it’s only like a decade older than VMS.

AIX is a decade newer and they don’t have one yet.

classichasclass

IBM adopted rpm a while back for AIX, though they’re inconsistent on that front.
- zie
  
  Go IBM, for not inventing some new package manager! I did a web search and didn’t see it, and it certainly wasn’t there last time I played with AIX, though it’s been a while. Thanks for the correction.
dmbaturin
I never worked with VMS as an admin, only as a user (the most recent instance was the now-sadly-defunct Deathrow Cluster). Now I went to read some official docs from the new developer and “classic” installation procedures sound absolutely onerous. Like this one for the C++ compiler:

To register the PAK on your system, you have the following options:

Copy the zipped license script (provided as part of the license distribution sent to you by a VMS Software manager) to your target system, unzip it there, rename its extension from .TXT to .COM, and execute it as a simple command procedure.

I’m really not sure why a DCL script cannot be distributed with .com extension inside a ZIP archive.

To be able to use the UNZIP command, create a foreign command that will run the UNZIP utility, for example:
```
$ UNZIP == "$SYS$COMMON:[SYSHLP.UNSUPPORTED.UNZIP]UNZIP.EXE"
```
…or why unzip is still tucked away in a directory called unsupported when first-party software is distributed in ZIP archive.

Although the document is a bit strange: it suggests that changing GBLPAGES/GBLSECTIONS requires a reboot, but I thought they were possible to change on the fly since some point.

I suppose at least some improvements to those procedures are long overdue. :)
- jcelerier
  
  I’m really not sure why a DCL script cannot be distributed with .com extension inside a ZIP archive.
  
  I’m pretty sure most e-mail clients would not let this go through
  - dmbaturin
    
    But it’s inside a ZIP archive.
- kwas
  
  I’m really not sure why a DCL script cannot be distributed with .com extension inside a ZIP archive.
  
  my guess is their outgoing “enterprise security email filter” makes a shit fit at anything that smells like executable code… by checking the extensions.
  
  why unzip is still tucked away in a directory called unsupported
  
  for the same reason OpenBSD keeps LLVM in a directory galled gnu. Hysterical reasons.