On 4/04/2015 5:07 AM, Paul Gilmartin wrote:
On Fri, 3 Apr 2015 16:47:41 +0000, Mark Regan wrote:
http://destinationz.org/Community/Evangelizing-Mainframe/March-2015/Open-Source-Support-on-IBM-z-Systems.aspx
Thanks,
Where I read:
... From endian ... issues, ...
Which will increase as Sparc dwindles. Does Linux for Z help stabilize
big-endian suport?
I don't think so. Even POWER (bi-endian) servers now run Linux in
little-endian. The industry has spoken, and I guess bigger is not better
in the endian wars.
...
The z/OS platform needs understanding and advocacy that spills outside
of its dedicated user base. Any of these open source packages can run
on z/OS with the right changes and testing. A great example of this is Perl
on z/OS. With some corporate assistance, a small group of z/OS developers
who love Perl and z/OS have helped create and maintain Perl in the official
source tree for Perl worldwide. Going forward, advocacy, testing and
modest support will make sure future z/OS programmers have access to
Perl today and in the future.
...
Is this true? Can one build the most recent Perl for z/OS? Even the
pre-release
versions?
I understand Unicode was a historic stumbling block. Is the z/OS build now
Unicode-savvy?
Is it BFP-savvy?
... The open source community is just that: a community. It is a large
community that is interested in sharing with the z/OS community. ...
Except, perhaps, for Guido van Rossum.
If you read what van Rossum said he was quite happy for python to run on
EBCDIC machines he just didn't want the EBCDIC patches littering the
Python source code and suggested maintaining a seperate patch. I for one
agree with him. Perl is a case in point. When the original authors of
the EBCDIC patches took off nobody wanted to maintain EBCDIC and there
was a massive amount of technical debt left in the Perl base source
code. Last thing I heard the Perl maintainers were giving serious
consideration to removing the EBCDIC patches from Perl.
-- gil
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