Please keep us informed on this - I remember enough of my MVS systems programming skills to run a Hercules emulator MVS here as well if it will work for a smoke platform. Insufficient round tuits at the moment to start working out the build environment from scratch, though.
MVS is a real EBCDIC system, though an older one (IBM's gone through 3 OS architecture transitions at this point, starting at MVS). It should be "good enough" to test the EBCDIC code on. On Oct 3, 2011, at 3:58 AM, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: > If you have a genuine EBCDIC environment, yes, that would help > immensely. The old OS might require some tweaking of the build > process, e.g. the hints/*.sh, but the EBCDICness would be very useful. > (Of course, if you have never built Perl 5 on this system, you might > have quite a few initial hurdles before getting to 'make test' > stage...) > > If you have the time time, yes, please do try building Perl 5.14 on > this system, or probably preferably even the 5.15 development branch. > I'm certain perl5-porters will be more than happy to help you. > > On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 12:32 PM, Henry Yen <[email protected]> wrote: >> On Mon, Oct 03, 2011 at 12:18:55PM +0200, Jarkko Hietaniemi wrote: >>> The EBCDIC systems (IBM mainframes running z/os or their close >>> variants in other similar mainframes, BUT NOT the Linux-on-z/os which >>> uses ASCII) are rare, and because of their multi-million dollar price >>> tags, and often financially related applications, they are closely >>> guarded by their users. Therefore getting random open source >>> developers any access to the systems is really hard. (Perl 5 porters >>> lucked out in early 5.8 in that they had access to not just one but >>> two z/os systems, one within Texas Instruments, and one in an IBM >>> development center. Unfortunately these accesses no more exist, and >>> it has been proven extraordinarily hard to find any people within IBM >>> that would make them arrange software development access to anyone >>> external.) >> >> I still run the old "public-domain"-ish MVS 3.8 and VMr6 on a Hercules >> emulator. Although access to a modern z/OS software system still >> requires effort and/or money, access to genuine hardware isn't >> necessarily an impediment? >> >> -- >> Henry Yen <[email protected]> Aegis Information Systems, >> Inc. >> Senior Systems Programmer Hicksville, New York >> (800) AEGIS-00 x949 1-800-AEGIS-00 (800-234-4700) >> >> > > > > -- > There is this special biologist word we use for 'stable'. It is > 'dead'. -- Jack Cohen
