RE: Any interest in porting emacs 20.x to OpenVMS v7.x

[Richard Levitte - VMS Whacker]

Hi,

I know the message is way old.  Eric Johnson talked to me about emacs as
well, in a time when I was overstressed (Eric, I'm sorry for the little
responsiveness you got from me).

The thing that got me stumped when I was going to port emacs 19.35 (yeah,
we're talking way back) was that I wanted to retain the configuration
script, just as I did for emacs 19.28.  For 19.28, I ported autoconf 1.x,
and believe me when I say it was absolute hell, but then again, now I
know sh really...  I thought...  You see, emacs 19.35 and on uses a newer
version of autoconf (2.x) for it's configuration script.  I've made an
attempt to port autoconf 2 and came quite a bit of the way, but then got
into something that got that port to stop dead in it's tracks.  Showed me
that I still needed to learn about the magical part of sh...

Anyhow, life went on, and I simply didn't get the time to take up
autoconf and concentrate on it, the rest followed by implication.

So, why am I writing this?  Well, I recently got reasons to start mucking
around seriously with emacs again, perhaps with a slightly different
approach.  Also, I've heard some rumour that there's something that works
very much like autoconf, except that it generates perl code instead of
sh.  Does anyone here know anything about this, or is it just an urban
legend that has hit me and that I'd have to wait endlessly for?

About giving VMS code back into mainstream emacs, well, that has been
attempted, a real long time ago when emacs 19 wasn't yet publically
available (we're talking 19.0 to 19.12 or something like that).  I was
working through someone at the FSF (don't recall his name right now), but
apparently RMS did feel it could be properly tested by the GNU project
and decided that it wasn't worth it, or something like that (I didn't get
all the details, just that it lead to a quite heated discussion).  This
is very sad, but I can understand RMS' reasons.  His goal is to create an
operating system with all imaginable tools in it, anything else being of
minor interest.  VMS support falls into that "minor" part, I'm afraid.

About the lists that I was maintaining for GNU stuff on VMS, they're
still there.  See http://vms.gnu.org/mailinglists.html.  They just
haven't (as you say) been used very much lately...

And now, this is getting to the point where I wonder if this is the right
list for this discussion.

   Date: Tue, 29 Feb 2000 12:09:26 -0800
   From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

   Eric Johnson wrote:

   > Sorry for the slightly off topic request, but this is probably my last
   > best hope.
   > 
   > We've used emacs for many years now and emacs 19.28 is getting
   > a little stale.  Unfortunately, not much work has been done lately on
   > getting emacs up to date.  Giving that its a small market and there's
   > little reward for doing this, I can understand that.  So to grease the
   > wheels so to speak, there would be financial compenstation
   > involved.
   > 
   > I'd like to locate someone or a small group of people who would
   > have the interest and required knowledge to port emacs 20.x to
   > OpenVMS v7.x for the Alpha.  To make the port a little easier, the
   > the porters could make the following assumptions if that makes
   > their life easier...
   > 
   > * Forget about the VAX
   > * Forget about anything before DEC C v6.x
   > * Forget about GCC
   > * Forget about anything before OpenVMS v7.x
   > * Socket support would go after the standard includes
   >     (ie. force Multinet users to use UCX compatibility mode)
   > * Forget about old MMS versions (or require MMK if that's better)
   > 
   > There are a couple of must haves, so the port can't be too dirty.
   > And more importantly, I'd like to get the code folded back into
   > the mainline GNU emacs development.  That way the VMS folks
   > don't get left behind despite our superior architecture and operating
   > system.  :->
   > 
   > If you're interested, please contact me so we can talk specifics.
   > Feel free to forward this email to anyone who you think might be
   > interested.  Also, if there are any other corporate interests out there,
   > perhaps we can do some joint sponsorships of this.

   Your request sounds reasonable.  The last I checked the various GNU on VMS
   mailing lists (including the emacs one that was probably the chattiest and 
   longest running) looked silent.  It would be very nice to resurrect them
   I'd think.

-- 
R Levitte, Levitte Programming;  Spannv. 38, I;  S-168 35  Bromma;  SWEDEN
    Tel: +46-8-26 52 47; Cell: +46-708-26 53 44; Fax: +46-708-26 53 88
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